I'm curious, how many of you had pen pals growing up? I definitely had a few. I need to give a special shout out to my long lost pen pal, Jaren, in Kapa'a, Kauai. Haven't found you on social media, so if you're around, please find me. Who else remembers staying up late into the night, writing letters to someone you maybe met at summer camp, or on a family vacation, or maybe never at all? We used to spill our secrets to these people, sometimes total strangers, telling them everything about our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our fears. But now, of course, there's the Internet. Social media has made it possible for virtually anyone to be your pen pal, no matter where they live. Honestly, it's that immediate connection with anyone, anywhere in the world that makes social media so freaking cool to me. And we all know how I love being connected to all of you online. But technology keeps expanding far beyond anything we've ever dreamed of. And it makes me wonder, What if one day we're able to do more than just message someone in another country? What if we could message someone in the distant past or the future? Well, rumor has it, it's been done before. In the mid-1980s, a couple living in Dottleston, England, said they were receiving messages from a mysterious pen pal from the year 1546. and someone in the future in 2109. But the communication wasn't limited to just their computer. Strange phenomena were happening around their home as well, leading many to wonder, was this some kind of elaborate hoax, a paranormal encounter, or some sort of time traveler making a breakthrough connection? I'm Rasha Pecorero. And I'm her sister, Yvette Gentile. And we're back for another timeless episode of So Supernatural. It's right before Christmas in the year 1984. 29-year-old Ken Webster has just gotten home from a night out. He lives in a historic cottage with his girlfriend Debbie and his friend Nicola, who goes by the name Nick. It's in a place called Dottleston, England, a small village just over the border from Wales. But right after he walked through the door that night, Ken notices something odd. In one corner of his living room, he has a personal computer. And blinking on the screen is a file he's never seen before. Something titled KDN. So obviously, personal computers back then looked a lot different than they do now. For one thing, they were a lot rarer. Computers had been around for decades, I mean, mostly used by labs and corporations for complicated math and data storage. But these were massive machines that took up the entire room and stored information on tapes or punch cards. Personal computers, meaning ones that could be set up in your house or business, were much newer. They'd only really started to become popular and affordable in the late 1970s. So the fact that Ken has one in his house is sort of a big deal. The one Ken has is called a BBC Micro. It consists of two very 80s looking beige boxes that are perched on top of each other. One with the computer's processor and keyboard, and the other box has a monitor. And it isn't actually his. Ken borrowed it from the nearby high school he teaches at, mostly so his roommate Nick can use it to type up her comedy sketches. So at first, he thinks the KDN file is another one of Nick's skits. But when he clicks on it, he finds a surprise. A letter addressed to the three roommates. KDN stands for Ken, Debbie, and Nick. The letter reads as follows. Get out your bricks, pussycat. Pussycat went to London to seek fame and fortune. Faith must not be lost, for this shall be your redeemer. Okay, y'all, can you decipher that? Because I am like, what are you talking about? I'm right there with you. But Ken shows Debbie, and at first, they think the bizarre poem is some sort of prank from Nick. That theory goes out the window when Nick admits she thought that one of them wrote it. After going back and forth, they start to think maybe a friend of theirs snuck in and wrote it. But after a while, they all just sort of forget about it. Until more strange things start happening in the cottage. Not just in cyberspace, but in the physical realm too. One day, soon after finding the message, Ken discovers a set of bare footprints in the hallway between the bathroom and the kitchen, which wouldn't be that odd except for one thing. Whoever made them had six toes. And they weren't just walking across the floor. They also went up the wall. Once again, Ken, Nick, and Debbie decide the whole thing's just got to be a prank. So they just cleaned it up and tried to brush it off. But the next day, the same six-toed footprints appear in the exact same place. Yeah, that's not creepy at all. Well, the phenomena doesn't stop there. Around the same time they find the footprints, Ken, Debbie, and Nick keep feeling these cold spots and sudden gusts of wind. It's an old cottage and a drafty one, but not that drafty. Plus, there's the weird stacking thing. One night, Ken, Debbie, and Nick find a bunch of their cat's food cans stacked into a perfect pyramid in the kitchen. Again, none of them takes credit for it, so they really can't explain how it's all happening. Something was obviously going on in the cottage. But it wasn't until February 1985, three months after they received the first message, that they finally got closer to an answer. That month, Ken borrows the BBC microcomputer from school again, and he leaves it in the living room, turned on. And Ken and Debbie are surprised when they come back and they find another mysterious file blinking on the screen. This time, it's titled Re-8. So basically, it's create but without the C. And if they thought the poem was weird, they're not ready for this message because it's barely legible. Most of the message is typed with strange misspellings and even stranger grammar, like something out of Shakespeare, which is a stark contrast to the flashing black and green matrix-looking lights of the computer. Eventually, though, they're able to decipher most of the message, which reads like a letter from the olden days. And what they find is, let's just say, shocking. The writer claims to be able to hear Ken and Debbie and see their home. He says that he's woken up at night by their strange words, and he marvels at the changes they've made to the cottage. He's especially fascinated by the lights, which he calls the work of the devil. Ken and Debbie take this to mean, I don't know, the electric lamps in the house? The writer also thinks the lights must mean Ken and Debbie are rich and important people. For the most part, it's a pretty flattering letter. The writer even calls Ken a goodly man and Debbie a fanciful woman. But the last line is somewhat disturbing. The author signs off with an angry complaint. He thinks that Ken and Debbie have stolen his house. The writer also signs his name L.W. Of course, they have no idea who that is. Again, they think it's all probably a joke, but their roommate Nick swears she didn't do it. You might be thinking there's an obvious solution here, right? It's a computer. It must have gotten hacked. But remember, this is 1985. Ken Webster's borrowed BBC Micro is basically just a word processor. It can type out documents, but it can't send emails or download files because it's not connected to a network. The first computer network, ARPANET, was around at this point, but it was really only used by research institutions and governments. The World Wide Web wouldn't be introduced until 1991. And since this computer isn't connected to any kind of network, there's no way to hack it remotely. Ken and Debbie and Nick did wonder if the messages were preloaded on the BBC Micro. Maybe one of Ken students at the school was messing with them But that also isn possible The BBC Micro had to save things to physical floppy disks before it was shut down or you'd lose every single thing. Every time the machine booted down, it wiped out its previous memory, deleting everything. So if no one wrote the message in person, no one preloaded the messages, and no one could connect to the computer remotely, then the message had to come from somewhere else. Or someone else. Eventually, Ken and Debbie decide they need more help. So they show the messages to their friend Peter Trinder, another teacher who works with Ken. He takes one look at the spelling and grammar and realizes he's actually seen it before. The way the mysterious L.W. writes is a dead ringer for early modern English, dating to about the 16th or 17th century. To Peter, it looks like the letters aren't a glitch. They're a message from the past. So he encourages Ken and Debbie to dig deeper. They need to find out more. They need to write back. In 1985, Ken Webster and his girlfriend Debbie Oaks are living in a historic cottage in Dattleston, England, when they start receiving mysterious messages on their personal computer. There's a lot of strange spelling and grammar issues, plus a disturbing threat saying Ken and Debbie are stealing the writer's house. So with that, they start to form a theory. LW, the author of those letters, lived in their cottage somewhere around 400 years ago. So is he a ghost? Is he time traveling? They have absolutely no idea. But there may be a way to find out. With their friend Peter's encouragement, they write back to LW. They ask for his full name, more information about him, and they even ask if he wants to know more about them. They even try to pin down the exact time period he's from by asking who the current king is. Then they go to the pub and wait because it seems like L.W. only responds when no one is around in the cottage. Sure enough, when they return, there's new writing in the document, an answer from 400 years ago. L.W. claims to be living during the reign of King Henry VIII, and he wants to know more about what things are like in their time. So this is the beginning of a pen pal relationship that will span 200 to 300 messages for the next year and a half. And while Ken and Debbie and Peter are looking for answers, they only find more questions. They quickly learn that L.W. stands for Lucas Wayman, a professor and landowner who seems to live on the same plot of land where Ken and Debbie's cottage stands. L.W. also says that King Henry VIII, in his time, is married to his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, which puts him somewhere between 1543 and 1547. Lucas claims he's communicating through what he calls a Leem's voice, which Ken's friend Peter concludes is early modern English for lightbox. They're not exactly sure what that means, but they think that some way, somehow, a personal computer has appeared in Tudor-era England. And months into their correspondence, Lucas tells them how he received his light box. According to him, it happened during a supernatural encounter. He says one night a strange green light appeared in his chimney. A messenger emerged from the light and told Lucas he was destined for greater things. Then he gave him a box that lights up with no flames. Lucas discovered that when he spoke to the box, it translated his voice into flickering characters on the screen, no typing necessary. I mean, this sounds crazy to us, but can you imagine? This sounds pretty unbelievable to Ken, Debbie, and Peter. But as they start researching the style and content of the letters, they're surprised that things actually do check out. Peter goes to local libraries looking for more historic information, and he also contacts scholars from universities. And he comes to the conclusion that the language Lucas uses isn't just period accurate, it's location accurate too. You see, back in the 1500s, people didn't move around that often. When the next town over was a several-day walk, villages became isolated. So they developed their own culture, which included shared slang grammar and accents. According to Peter's research, the letters showing up on their computer matched the type of language used in the mid-1500s in Cheshire, the county the cottage is in. After Lucas mentions living in a redstone house, Ken does some physical digging of his own. He discovers that Lucas's description matches the red stone buried in the foundation of his cottage. But over time, it's not just the letters they're exchanging. Lucas's presence starts invading the cottage in other more, let's just say, metaphysical ways. By this point, Nick has moved out of the cottage. so it's just Ken and Debbie dealing with Lucas day to day and once again they're experiencing these strange sensations around the home similar to the cold spots and odd footprints they saw just before the first message. On May 15th 1985, Debbie drops Ken off at his school for work then heads home to feed their cats. As she walks into the front garden she feels uneasy though she can't really tell why. It's something about the cats who are sitting on the stairs and garden wall just watching her. Then it hits her. They're being far too quiet. Normally they're winding around her feet and meowing, crying for food. But now they're silent and keeping their distance. When she opens the door, she realizes why. All of their living room furniture is stacked in the center of the room, six feet high. After that, Debbie starts seeing Lucas everywhere, not just in the letters or in the poltergeist activity in the house, but in her dreams. in one dream she finds herself in a simple bedroom in an old-fashioned nightgown in the room with her is a middle-aged man in dated clothes who she realizes is lucas the visit turns romantic and modern-day debbie and tutor era lucas share a kiss debbie also starts seeing Lucas in waking life. Sometimes she spots him just out of the corner of her eye, while other times he's clear as day. But once someone else comes into the room, he just disappears. That's when Debbie starts researching paranormal explanations for her encounters and comes across a phenomenon called ley lines. Yeah, and we have talked about ley lines briefly, like we talked about it in the Bel Air episode, but essentially they're these invisible paths of energy that crisscross the entire globe. They connect different significant places, sort of like a web. Just think of them like latitude and longitude, but for magic. Debbie learns that ley lines were first discovered in 1921 when a British landscape photographer was lining up a shot atop a tall hill. He realized that the ancient sites that dotted the landscape below seemed to form a straight line or a direct path to one another. He consulted maps and took photographs from other hills in the area, and his observation all supported the same conclusion. For some reason, ancient settlements, tombs, and religious structures all seemed to lay along the same path. When Debbie looks at geographical maps and old books, she discovers that the village of Dottleston is also on a ley line, meaning it is the perfect place for things to get real spooky. Meanwhile, Ken and his friend Peter prefer to stick to the evidence right in front of them, the messages from Lucas. They try to find out more about their pen pal. And while they're impressed with his period-accurate spelling and speech, Peter grows concerned when he spots some inconsistencies. Like the timeline issue. In Lucas's first messages, he said the year was 1521, and that King Henry VIII, the ruler of England, was 46 years old. But there's a problem with that. In 1521, King Henry VIII was only 30. Later on, Lucas claims that the king is married to Catherine Parr, which means the year in Lucas's time must be somewhere between 1543 and 1547, much later than 1521. It also means Henry VIII would be in his early 50s. So a lot of the dates and times he's giving seem wrong. And then there's the college issue. Early in their correspondence Lucas claimed he studied at Jesus College in Oxford which is all well and good except Jesus College wasn founded until 1571 and that nearly 30 years after the time Lucas is supposed to be writing from Not wanting to scare him off, Ken, Debbie, and Peter don't challenge the inconsistencies in the messages, so they're surprised when Lucas himself brings them up. You see, in a series of messages, Lucas tells them he has gotten the facts wrong on purpose to see if they really were from the future. If they called him out on it, then he'd know that they were telling the truth. But since they didn't, he was suspicious the whole thing was a prank, or worse, the work of evil spirits. eventually debbie ken and peter are able to convince lucas they're the real deal and they find that lucas was paranoid for good reason shortly after lucas's accusations they get their strangest message yet one from someone who claims to be lucas's friend this friend says that lucas is in dire trouble. He's been arrested by the sheriff, a man named Sir Thomas Fowleshurst, and he's in jail for accusations of witchcraft. It seems people found out about the light box he's using to send messages. Thankfully, they don't have to worry about Lucas for long, because just a few days later, the BBC Micro lights up with a new message. Lucas is out of jail on house arrest. But that's not the end of it. While Lucas is free, for now, he will face trial and could be put to death for witchcraft. At this point, Ken, Debbie, and Peter are probably feeling pretty helpless. This new friend they've made has become an important part of their lives. In fact, their relationship with this pen pal may be an important part of human history, if, if he's the real deal. And now they're in a race against the clock to not only get answers, but see if they can save him somehow. So they keep exchanging messages during which Ken mentions something that has somehow never come up before. The fact that he's living in the year 1985. But the message Ken receives back is very concerning. Lucas says he was under the impression this entire time that Ken was from the same time as the person who gave him the light box. Except that person, whom Lucas refers to as the one wasn't from 1985. He was from 2109. 124 years in Ken's future. In the spring of 1985, Ken Webster, his girlfriend Debbie Oaks, and their friend Peter Trinder become pen pals with someone from the past. Through their personal computer, they write messages to a man named Lucas Weinman, who seems to live in their house 400 years before them. There are just a few little problems. For one, Lucas is about to face trial for witchcraft. Second, he tells Ken there's another player in all of this, The messenger who delivered him the lightbox is from the future, from the year 2109 to be exact. But shortly after Ken learns about this mysterious time traveler, Lucas goes radio silent. And since they can't reach Lucas, they figure they'll try to message the person who seems to be pulling the strings, the mysterious entity from 2109. Ken creates a new document on the computer and writes a simple message, calling 2109. Then, he, Debbie, and Peter leave the room and wait to see if there's a response. The next time they check the computer, sure enough, there's a reply. Here's what it says. Ken, Deb, Peter, you have two choices. 1. That we explain this experiment and cause what should not be to happen. Or 2. Understand that you have a purpose that shall change the face of history. We, 2109, must not affect you directly, but guide you and allow room for your own destiny. The entity seems to use the pronouns we, hinting it speaks for a group, or perhaps it is some kind of multitude. But one thing is clear, the language and spelling is a lot different than Lucas, using more scientific terms. terms. The most shocking revelation from 2109's message is that Ken, Debbie, and Peter, and Lucas all seem to have been selected for some kind of experiment, one that could have a huge impact on history. And its architects, living in 2109, don't want to interfere with events in 1985 or with events in the 1540s. Without help from 2109, Ken, Debbie, and Peter are left in the dark. Days go by without messages from Lucas and they research desperately, hoping to find a mention of his fate somewhere. But with no new information, they begin to think Lucas has been killed for witchcraft. Finally, one day they wake up to a new message on the BBC Micro. One from another new writer, Thomas Fowlshurst. If you remember, he's the sheriff who arrested Lucas. And he delivers the news Ken, Debbie, and Peter have been desperately waiting for. Lucas is alive. While he will still go on trial, the sheriff is seemingly intrigued by this light box he has and the people Lucas is communicating with. So he says he's keeping Lucas alive to keep the conversation going. Lucas starts speaking with Ken, Debbie, and Peter again. But then they realize something. Some parts of the messages seem to be deleted or altered. For example, they send Lucas a message asking about the apparent poltergeist activity, which has continued since they first established contact with Lucas. Debbie was being driven crazy by noises coming from the roof. It sounded like they were in the middle of a hailstorm, though the weather outside was beautiful and clear. So Ken asked Lucas if he experienced the same thing in his house. To his surprise, Lucas writes back saying that yes, he has. And this whole time, he thought Ken, Debbie, and Peter were the ones to blame. Now, they're wondering if it might be their mutual friend from the year 2109. After this, Ken leaves for only about 20 minutes or so. But when he comes back into the room, he notices something that has never happened before. His previous message is missing. And he has a sneaking suspicion that 2109 is to blame. So Debbie quickly comes up with an alternate method of communication. Until now, they believe the messages had to come through the light box. But she starts to wonder whether Lucas can reach them in other ways. So Debbie leaves a piece of paper and a pencil near the computer, and they find out he is able to write the messages on it. They figure this new channel is free from the prying eyes of 2109. So Lucas decides to drop some new revelations about himself. He admits he hasn't been telling the truth. His name isn't even Lucas Wayman. It's Thomas Harden. And he doesn't work at Jesus College at Oxford. He used to be the dean of a chapel at Brazenose College. But Lucas, or Thomas, I guess, whatever you want to call him, tells them that he was fired from Brazenose for something strange, like not scratching the Pope's name out of a book in the chapel. At this point, the messages with Lucas slash Thomas have been going on for months. The details they get seem to be lining up with history. So after Ken, Debbie, and Peter tell their story to friends and colleagues, someone makes a suggestion. They should get it investigated officially. They should call up the Society for Psychical Research. The Society for Psychical Research, or SPR, has been around since the late 1800s. It was originally founded to apply the scientific method to things like hauntings and seances. While its members had a reputation for being open-minded, it was mostly known for exposing frauds, fake psychics, phony ghosts, all kinds of hoaxers. so sometime in the summer of 1985 two official looking men with cameras and notepads show up at the cottage in dawgleston they claim they're from the spr their names are john bucknell and david welch their first tactic is just to observe they have ken debbie and peter write messages to thomas on the BBC micro and leave the room as they normally do. John and David keep Debbie, Ken, and Peter under strict watch making sure none of them go back in to write a fake message But no one writes back They do the same thing by having them write a message to 2109 but they only get radio silence John and David decide to take matters into their own hands. They're getting nowhere by waiting passively. They need to actively challenge the entities, either Thomas or 2109, to show themselves. So they devise a test. They come up with 10 questions for 2109, which they keep secret from Ken, Debbie, and Peter. They write the questions on the BBC Micro, and then they delete them. They tell Ken and Debbie to alert them if they hear from either pen pal. And then they leave. A few days later, John and David get a call. 2109 has written back. The message they receive on the BBC Micro is addressed directly to John and David. 2109 accuses them of meddling in a sensitive matter they just don't understand. It also tells them something interesting. It refers to itself as being part of a tachyon universe. A tachyon is a hypothetical particle that is supposed to travel faster than the speed of light. Most physicists agree we haven't found evidence that tachyons exist, and if they did, they would create space-time paradoxes. But 2109 claims to live in such a universe where entities don't have a form. And it says it feeds off a type of energy that John and David wouldn't have heard of. I gotta say, is this an early form of AI or is this something more supernatural? We all know I always want to think something is supernatural, but it sounds like the stuff of science fiction to me. But John and David can't ignore a few key things in this message. We don't know exactly what John and David asked during the test, but it seems like 2109 is sort of responding to something from those questions. And since Ken, Debbie, and Peter never saw the questions, they couldn't have written the reply. Still, this doesn't seem like enough evidence for the SPR to admit there is something inexplicable happening through the BBC Micro. In total, John and David end up coming back and investigating eight more times. They don't say whether they witnessed any poltergeist activity or saw any more messages, but by the end, they say they aren't able to reach a real conclusion. In fact, on their last day, they tell Ken, Debbie, and Peter they think this has to be a hoax. They just had no idea how it was being done. By the time the SPR wraps up their investigation in mid-1986, it seems the entities were ready to call it quits too. 2109 stopped responding entirely. And after almost 16 months of cross-time friendship, Lucas slash Thomas says it's time to say goodbye. Fed up with all the attention from the sheriff, Thomas' landlords have demanded he vacate the house. He tells them he will return to Oxford to see if he can get his old job back as chapel dean at Brazenose College. He signs off with a final message saying he plans to write a book all about this. And he hopes that one day he and Ken will meet. And that's the last time they speak. After Ken Webster says his final goodbye to Thomas, he goes back to his normal life. He writes the events down in a book called The Vertical Plane, which he publishes three years later in 1989. The book sells modestly, mostly to friends, family, and paranormal fanatics. Some people who pick it up think it's a work of fiction. But it and Ken's story get a boost in 1996 when it's featured on a BBC TV show called Out of This World. That bump in popularity also attracts a lot of skeptics. And over the past few decades, the debate has raged on, fueled again by Ken's new edition of the book, which he published in 2022. Let's just get to the nitty gritty. Were the Dattleston messages actually letters from the past and the future? Or was the entire thing an elaborate prank? When you look back through all the details, there are a lot of things that feel real. Remember the sheriff who put their friend under house arrest? His name was Thomas Foulshurst. and Ken, Peter, and Debbie were able to find mentions of a sheriff named Thomas Fowleshurst dating to the 1540s in that area. And when they discover their friend Lucas's name was actually Thomas Harden, this turns out to be another piece of positive evidence. With the help of a librarian at Oxford, Peter was able to track down a man at Brazenose called Thomas Harden, whose timeline fits with what Thomas told them. After Thomas sent his last message, Ken was able to track down another mention of Thomas Harden. Apparently, their friend became the vicar at Little Barrington in Gloucestershire from 1551 to 1554. All of these do sound like evidence that Ken, Debbie, and Peter were communicating with real people from the past. But there's also the flip side of it. If it was a hoax, perhaps this was part of it. Ken, Debbie, or Peter could have easily looked up the details about Thomas Fowleshurst and Thomas Harden ahead of time. And then they just peppered actual historic facts into messages to make them look real. But if it was a hoax, there had to be a reason. So it's also good to consider why Ken, Debbie, and Peter might make something like this up. Some of their critics claimed it was obviously a money-making venture. But if so, where's the money? Ken, Debbie, and Peter got some press back when the messages first appeared in 1985. So if they wanted to cash in, why did Peter wait three whole years to publish a book? It really does feel like Ken, Debbie, and Peter believed this was real when it was happening. But even then, there are some issues with their story that are hard to reconcile. Like how early on, Thomas would get simple facts and dates wrong. And even though he later claimed to be testing his 1985 pen pals, some critics wondered whether this was just a prankster covering for their mistakes. And 2109 would often misspell things and spell the same word in different ways. Critics said that was a clear sign of a hoax. There was also the grammar and syntax of Thomas's messages. Back in 1985, Peter did his own research and found it matched the way someone from 1540s Dottleston would write. But when linguistic experts got a hold of the messages, they felt differently. Remember the show we mentioned earlier, Out of This World? It aired in 1996, and in the show, they interviewed a woman who thinks the messages are not true Middle English, but a pretty good fake. The tell, according to her, the verbs are slightly wrong. Thomas was mixing up his suffixes and putting them with the wrong subjects, not a mistake a native speaker would make. And in the same episode, producers asked Peter point blank what he thought about the linguist's conclusion, and he was evasive. He said, of course, the experts said it was fake. This was because admitting it was real would put their careers at risk. But according to Peter, deep down they knew that the language was accurate because it was written by Thomas Harden and the messages were real. So, were Ken, Debbie, and Peter hoaxers? Or were they being hoaxed? By a friend or a colleague? or most mystifyingly of all, were they telling the truth? There are still things we don't know about the Dattleston messages, like who the mysterious beings from 2109 were, what their supposed experiment was, and why they chose Debbie, Ken, Peter, and Thomas. but we may not have to wait another hundred years to find out the truth. The answer may actually be out there, hiding in the pages of a book. Before he signed off one final time, Thomas told his modern friends that he would write down everything that had happened to him. He'd hide the manuscript somewhere in Oxford in the hopes that it would survive through the years to reach Ken, Debbie, and Peter, and prove once and for all that they had a friendship that transcended the ages. So until someone finds that book, this is one chapter we simply just cannot close. This is So Supernatural, an audio check original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at SoSupernaturalPodcast.com. Join Rasha and me next Friday for an all new episode. I think Chuck would approve.
