EXCLUSIVE: The ghost story that nearly got journalist Tristan Redman 'disowned'.

It all begins with an assumption. Journalist Tristan Redman suspects he was haunted by his wife's great-grandmother. While living in an old Victorian house in London as a 16-year-old, Redman recalls odd things happening in his bedroom on the top floor. 

"I'd wake up and objects would have moved around the room. Particularly this one yellow vase, I'd go to bed and it would be on the mantlepiece but then in the morning, it would be on the desk... the next morning I'd find it somewhere else," he tells Mamamia's No Filter podcast.

Redman also remembers lights flashing on and off on their own and a "cold feeling" when he was home alone. He didn't think much of it at the time, instead assuming his sister was playing tricks on him. This is because Redman does not believe in ghosts.

Listen to Tristan Redman on Mamamia's No Filter podcast. Post continues after audio.

He had all but forgotten what happened to him as a teenage boy until one day he received an email from his dad. In the message, his father said he had spoken to an old neighbour who encountered a former resident of their London home who claimed the house was haunted. 

"Do you still have that ghost in the top bedroom?" the neighbour recalled being asked by the man. They went on to say that the family's daughter had several brushes with something supernatural. 

Redman knew exactly what this family's daughter was talking about. She says she saw "the ghost of a faceless woman".

"I was not really into ghosty stuff anyway, but it did kind of knock me off kilter," says Redman. "Then you hear from different families who have lived in this house that they all experienced strange things."

Then things became extra weird. So weird in fact that he knew he had to investigate. This is the premise of the podcast Ghost Story, a seven-part investigation that involves a faceless woman, supernatural phenomena, a murder, a dark family secret, and a Hollywood actor.

Redman discovered that his wife Kate Dancy's family used to live in the house next door. In this house, Kate's great-grandmother Naomi was murdered. By who?

Her brother Maurice was convicted of the murder, who was also found dead in the house, but suspicion loomed over Naomi's husband and the Dancy family's great-grandfather John Dancy, known as Feyther, who managed to escape.

This dark history was uncovered when Feyther's son visited Redman's home when he had just begun dating Kate. 

Kate's grandad walked into the house, and before he said anything else, he said, "My mother was murdered in the house next door."

The unexpected Hugh Dancy cameo.

Before we jump into this story further, let's quickly discuss how a Hollywood actor is connected to this story.

Redman is married to Kate, who is a member of the prestigious Dancy family. Kate's brother is famous actor Hugh Dancy.

Hugh Dancy with wife Claire Danes. Image: Getty. 

The actor is known for roles in TV show Hannibal, movies like Confessions of a Shopaholic, and most recently in the Downton Abbey: A New Era movie sequel. 

Kate and Hugh's father is Johnathan Dancy, an Oxford professor and famous British philosopher. Johnathan's father is also named John Dancy, who served as headmaster at several prolific colleges in the UK, including one where the Princess of Wales Kate, Middleton, was later a boarder.

So yes, a rather impressive family indeed. But perhaps, a family with secrets worth hiding. 

The ghost story's connection to the murder. 

After hearing about the murder, Redman couldn't help but wonder if the faceless female ghost spotted in his childhood bedroom could be Naomi. 

This story got extra twisted when the journalist learned that Kate's great-grandmother Naomi had been shot through both eyes, which could explain the ghost's lack of face. In the news, it was reported that Maurice had lost an eye in the war and grown jealous of his sister's beautiful eyes.

After murdering his sister in her bed, Maurice tried to shoot Feyther, and then locked himself in the upstairs bathroom and slit his throat with a razor blade. The crime was deemed as a murder-suicide. 

"Morris had imbalanced PTSD from serving in the First World War, which wasn't uncommon for those days. The crime was heavily reported on at the time, and Naomi was also a prominent doctor in London. The brutality of the murder really seized people's attention as well," explains Redman.

"But there are reasons to be suspicious of my wife's great grandfather. And that's really what we delve into in the podcast."

As Redman notes, there were parts of the investigation that were questionable. 

No one questioned why Feyther washed blood off Maurice's hand and replaced a razor he was holding. And there had been two anonymous letters sent to the police at the time suggesting that Feyther was the real murderer, claiming he had killed both his wife and his brother-in-law.

This series of revelations brought Tristan to ponder to Kate: "Did your great-grandfather get away with murder? Is your great-grandmother the faceless woman haunting my teenage bedroom? And while we're at it, did we end up married because this ghost wants me to solve a murder that everyone's been getting wrong for a century?"

Why the Dancy family didn't want this podcast made. 

Redman says that his podcast put him at risk of Kate's family "disowning" him, given how beloved Feyther was in the Dancy dynasty. 

In one episode, a relative told the host, "If you come out with a piece that says he [John Dancy] is a murderer, I'll be sorry we ever said we would contribute to it."

Kate added that the family were "more traumatised by this podcast than we were the murder". Hugh Dancy was one family member who saw the merits of such an investigation. He said that his great-grandfather was always labelled as a "fabulist" among the family. "I looked it up immediately in the dictionary. It’s just another word for liar," the actor said. 

Redman tells No Filter that he felt the urge to push on with his investigation, despite the uncomfortable dynamic it created with his in-laws. 

"Feyther came across as a guy who told tall tales. He wrote an almost 3000-word memoir about his life, and it seems like most of the 3000 words or 3000 pages are not true. There were members of the family who took it very badly, it was really hard. He was such a totemic figure for them and for what the family is today."

Initially the entire investigation on Redman's part came down to curiosity. Then it evolved into something deeper.

"Amid the family folklore and recounting of what happened, Naomi was always cast aside, Feyther front and centre. It evolved over time into having a feeling that maybe there was an injustice what had been committed," says Redman.

"She was a woman who really deserved to be remembered. I hoped that by trying to get a little bit closer to the truth, we might be able to rectify that a bit."

The eerie revelation from a psychic medium.

To try and connect with the supernatural energy in his childhood home, Redman and his podcast team decided to reach out to a series of psychic mediums around London.

"We met like four or five psychic mediums in one day on this kind of mad paranormal goose chase. I went into it totally sceptical, not prepared to give any of them the time of day," Redman tells Mamamia. "By the end, I was quite disturbed."

One of the psychic mediums seemed to provide more accurate information than the others. He was unassuming too - a young, American guy who was softly spoken and not grandiose in his approach. 

Fortunately, the current owners of the house next to Redman's childhood home were intrigued by the whole thing, and so they agreed to let the team into the room where Naomi was murdered for a seance of sorts. 

They audio filmed the whole encounter, and it features in Ghost Story. Depending on your perspective on ghosts and the supernatural, lots of people feel differently about whether or not the ghost of Naomi was actually contacted. 

"It felt incredibly weird going into the house. Something definitely happened, not in the sense of ghosts and spirits because I still don't believe in that stuff," says Redman. "But the process that we went through of a group of people coming together in a room, sitting in a circle on the carpet, and thinking very intensely and intently about what had happened in that room - it had an effect."

The challenge for Ghost Story and Redman is that no concrete answers are found, and fair enough. Confirming the existence of a ghost is hard, as well as confirming the exact details of a murder that took place 100 years ago.

The response to the podcast was huge, thousands upon thousands intrigued as well by the supposed faceless woman in Redman's childhood bedroom.

However, what Redman knows for certain is this - Naomi's story deserves to be front and centre.

"I've been very touched by the number of people who've been very moved by the story of Naomi - who she really was and bringing her back into the Dancy family story. That's really meant a lot to me," he notes.

"We're always going to agree to disagree on a few things. But generally speaking, I could not have been luckier with the family I married into, they're a pretty amazing bunch. Not everyone would have put up with this."

You can listen to Ghost Story by Wondery on your favourite podcast app.

This article was originally published on November 14, 2023, and has since been updated with new information.

Feature Image: The Sun/Wondery/Mamamia.