Today's story is a good old-fashioned, scary story that you might tell around a campfire. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of The Strange, Dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. So if that's of interest to you, please super glue 50 harmonicas to the front of the like button's car right before they leave for work. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the afternoon of Sunday, February 25th, 1855, a 48-year-old woman named Hannah Rallinson, along with her husband and a group of her friends, walked quickly down a road in Sheffield, England. As they walked, the entire group was totally silent because they were of what was going to happen next. Behind Hannah and her friends on this road was actually another slightly larger group of people that were keeping pace with Hannah and her friends. They were actually going to the same place as them, except this second group had no intention of going inside that building.

They were just there to see what happened. Now, Hannah and her friends were totally offended and annoyed by this group that was following them, but they knew there was nothing they could do, and so they just kept on walking in silence. And as Hannah walked in silence, she couldn't help but think to herself, how in the world did I get into this position? At the time, Sheffield, England was a big industrial city with lots of metalworking factories all over the place. And so loads of people at the time were coming to Sheffield to work in those factories. And as the population increased in Sheffield, the city began building all these tenement apartments, which are like these low quality, cramped, interconnected apartments that are basically cheap and easy to make and to house lots and lots of people. Hannah and her husband lived in one of these tenement apartments, and they worked in one of the metalworking factories, which meant their lives were pretty rough and difficult. But recently, their lives had become even more challenging when their oldest son had died in a coal mining accident, and this totally devastated the parents, but Hannah definitely took it the worst.

In her grief, Hannah became very antisocial and began just going to the factory and doing backbreaking labor all day, and then came straight home. She would go to a room by herself, and she would just sit there all night and pray and try to communicate with her dead son. Now, at first, Hannah's husband basically did the same thing as Hannah. He put all of his energy and his time and his focus on work, even though it was totally backbreaking and miserable, mainly because it was a distraction from this terrible grief he was dealing with. But after several weeks and months went by, Hannah's husband did begin to get back to normal and began to move forward with his life. But he could see Hannah was not doing that. Hannah was totally depressed and isolated. And so he eventually encouraged her to start going back to church and start spending more time with people there, make some new friends, and hopefully being around some people will help you cope with this tragedy. And Hannah had actually taken her husband's advice. She began going back to church. She made a bunch of new friends. She rekindled old relationships.

And before long, she was getting that support, and it was helping her move through this grieving process. But ironically, it was this new church support group that had thrust Hannah into a new horrible situation, one that was playing out on the streets of Sheffield, England, as Hannah, her husband, and her church friends speed walked down the road with this big group following behind them. And so in this group of people with Hannah was obviously her husband, as well as her closest friend from church, whose name was Harriet Ward. And then also there was three members of the Favelle family. There was Mr. And Mrs. Favelle, as well as Mrs. Favelle's sister. And all of them were headed to the tenement apartment on Camp O Lane, where Harriet Ward and the Favelle family lived together. Hannah and her group and the second group that was following them all came from the same place. They all went to the same church. And that day, for the previous two hours before they all took to the streets here, they had been having this really heated argument about what to do about Harriet and the Favelle family's basement, or more specifically, what to do about what was in their basement.

Some parishioners said that Harriet and the Favelle family were just totally making up what was going on in their basement. But other parishioners believed them and said that that basement was so dangerous, nobody should go in it. In fact, we should just board up that basement permanently, or we should just level the entire tenement apartment building. And when that idea began gaining some traction, that lots of people in the church began saying, Yeah, let's block off the basement or knock the apartment down, the Favelle family and Harriet, who lived in this apartment building and did not want to permanently block off segments of it or knock it down, they got so angry that they just stood up and left. And at this point, Hannah and her husband just got up and left with their friends. Now, once they got outside, they didn't really have a plan, but they felt strongly that they just needed to get to the Campo Lane Tenement apartment building and at a minimum, just be in there to prevent other people from showing up and doing something to the apartment, like trying to knock it down or do something to the basement.

And so Hannah and her group began speedwalking to the apartment, and this gaggle of other churchgoers who were part of this argument just naturally came outside and followed them. And then when Hannah and her friends reached the apartment building on Camp O'Lane, they went inside and shut and locked the door behind them. And for a moment, Hannah and the five other people she was with, they just stood there in silence, not really sure what to do next. But eventually, Initially, one of them said, We got to do something about the basement, because if we don't, the people outside will. Hannah walked over to the front of the apartment where there was a big window that looked out to the street. And when she looked out there, she saw the big group of people that had followed them were all gathering around these small window that looked down into the Camp O'Lane Tenement Department basement. It was like all these people were jockeying for position to get the best look. Hannah shut the blind in frustration and then walked back over to the group. And then after a few minutes, Mr. Favell said, Guys, it's only going to be daylight for a few more hours.

If we're going to do something in the basement, we have to get down there before the daylight is gone. We can't be down there in the dark. The group nodded because they understood why they definitely did not want to be down there in the dark. And then Mr. Favell looked over at Hannah's husband, and he gestured like, Why don't we, the two of us, go down there together? And Hannah's husband, even though he did not want to go down there, he just nodded and said, Okay, let's go. Moments later, Hannah, Harriet, and the two Favel women watched as the two men opened up the basement door, turned around and looked at the women, and then they slowly began descending the stairs. And then after a couple of minutes, the only sound coming out of the basement was the sound of these two men using big metal tools to attempt to break up the stone floor in the basement. For the next two hours, Mr. Favel and Hannah's husband continued to smash up the floor in the basement, but every time they removed a big piece of stone, all they'd find was dirt underneath. There was nothing else.

Meanwhile, outside, the crowd looking in that window into the basement was only getting bigger and bigger. It was no longer just other members of their church. It was now just random people who saw this big group and walked over to see what was going on. And Hannah, who was at that window looking out into the street, she was seeing this group growing and seeing how rowdy they were getting, and it was starting to make her really nervous. But the nerves she felt about the crowd were nothing compared to the nerves she felt about her husband and Mr. Favelle still being in that basement now that the sun was about to set. She did not want them down there in the dark. And finally, when the sun did set and the two men still had not come up, Hannah just rushed over to the basement and yelled for them to stop what they were doing and get up here. And the two men did as she asked. They dropped their tools and came upstairs looking totally dejected. They had not found the thing they were looking for down there, which meant they had failed. But Hannah and her friends were hoping that now that it was dark outside and the people outside could no longer actually see into the basement because it was too dark, that maybe the crowd would disperse.

But as Hannah, her husband, Harriet, and the favels sat down to have some dinner in the apartment, they looked outside periodically, and they saw the crowd was not going away. If anything, the crowd was still continuing to get bigger. Now, you got to remember, this is Sheffield, England, in the 1800s. This was a tough place to live. Everybody's working at these factories, doing this awful work seven days a week for very little money, and there's virtually no entertainment anywhere. It's basically just work, work, work until you die. And so when people in Sheffield saw this big group of people at night standing around this apartment window, it was exciting, and that was pretty rare in their lives. And so they were not about to leave and go home because their lives at home were terrible. And so by about midnight, there was this huge crowd right outside of the Camp O'Lane apartment, and it meant that Hannah and her husband really couldn't leave to go back to their apartment. They were trapped because of this crowd. Also, the crowd was really starting to get rowdy, and the Favel family were starting to get worried that a fight would break out near the basement window, and then maybe the window would break, and then these people would storm into their apartment and maybe robbed them.

I mean, they didn't know. And so Mrs. Favel came up with this plan to try to get the crowd to leave them alone. And so she ran over to one of the biggest windows on the first floor, and she pulled down the curtain rod and the curtain attached to it. And she handed it to her sister and said, Go down in the basement and use this curtain rod and curtain to block out the one window this crowd has to look into the basement. If they can't see into the basement, then they'll likely just leave. But Mrs. Pavel's sister, after being handed this curtain rod, she's like, I don't want to go in the basement. It's the middle of the night. I'm not going down there. And over the next couple of minutes, the entire group just bickered about who should be the one to go down into the basement to cover up this window. And nobody wanted to do it. And finally, Hannah, who she's lost her son recently. She just wants to go home at this point, but she can't because of this stupid group, she finally just snaps and says, You know what?

I'll do it. And so she snatches the curtain rod and just walks right over to the basement door. She opens it up and begins descending the stairs before anybody else could stop her. And as she did, her husband and Harriet and the Favelle family, they all crowded around the top of the basement stairs, looking down, waiting to see what would happen. Last night, after I talked- I can't think how long. Into the little lily pad bed, and I had handed him this nice warm glass of fly milk. I was about to leave the room for the night when the little guy sat up and he said, Papa, naudra mih i fabulam, which, of course, in traditional Latin, means, Papa, please tell me a story. And I smiled and said, Of course, Lung. I know Lung is a real sucker for Lung theme stories. And luckily, because of our new show, Mr. Ballin's Medical mysteries, I'm up to my lungs in Lung theme stories. And so before Lung, I was regaling a whole sick of Lung with a story about a man who believed he was just sick, but it turned out he had a tree growing in his lung.

Something I'm sure we all can relate to. Speaking of relatable, if you haven't already, you really ought to check out Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries, because every week we cover totally strange, baffling medical mysteries that all originate from the one place we all can't escape, our own bodies. You can listen to Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries early on Amazon Music, because on that platform, we released them in batches of eight episodes at once. But you can also listen to Mr. Bollin's medical mysteries on every other podcast platform. However, you only get one new episode every week. Again, Mr. Bollin's medical mysteries is available on all podcast platforms for free, but you can listen to it early in batches on Amazon Music or new episodes once a week on every other platform. Okay, back to the story. And so they all heard as Hannah turned the corner and walked over to that window, and they could hear her messing around with the curtain as she put it in place. And then even though they could not see her down there because the basement is totally dark, they can't see the window, they heard Hannah call out that she was done.

She had put the curtain up, it's blocked, and now she was going to come back upstairs. But after she yelled to them that she was coming back up, it went completely silent in the basement. And for like five, six, seven seconds, all the people at the top of the stairs are waiting anxiously for Hannah to turn the corner and come up the stairs to safety. But then this tense silence was broken with a horrible scream coming out of the basement. It was Hannah. And then silence again. And at this point, Hannah's husband, he's like, Oh, my God, something's happened. And he charges down the stairs and he looks over and he sees Hannah is lying on the ground motionless. There's nothing else in the basement. It's just his wife in this covered up window. And so he runs over, he scoops her up, and he runs her back upstairs, and he lays her on the ground right outside of the basement door. And then he began to shake her to try to wake her up. But she wasn't waking up. However, it was clear she was still breathing. And so Harriet ran and got a wet towel, and she came back and she kneeled down next to Hannah, and she placed the towel on Hannah's forehead, hoping this wet towel would revive Hannah.

But as Harriet is kneeling there, so she's looking at Hannah's body and the basement door, which is open, is right past Hannah's body, Harriet happened to look up. And so now she's looking into the doorway that leads down into the basement, and her eyes went wide and she screamed, and then she passed out. The big controversy over this basement began several weeks earlier at the beginning of February, when Harriet and the Favelle family began hearing all these strange sounds coming out of the basement. Now, initially, they had totally written off these sounds as being strange creaking and cracking sounds that were just the product of a poorly constructed building with lots of people inside of it. But the noises they were hearing from the basement only got louder and louder and more intense, and they were especially bad at night. And so basically, Harriet and the Favelle family were so scared to go down there that they just stopped, especially at night. Sometimes they go during the day, but at night it was like, no one's going down there. We don't know what's going on, but I'm not going down there. And then on February 24th, so this is one day before all this craziness happened where Hannah and her friends get followed to the apartment, and then Hannah goes down and she passes out and then Harriet passes out.

So one day before that, Harriet swore she saw a ghost in the basement. She saw this old woman wearing a white gown moving around in the basement. And the whole time, Harriet said this woman, this ghost woman, was pointing at one particular spot on the ground in the basement. And then the same night that Harriet sees this ghost in the basement, Harriet has a dream. And in her dream, she sees this ghost. And again, this ghost is in that basement, and it's pointing at the spot on the basement floor. Except in Harriet's dream, this ghost woman speaks to Harriet and says that she was murdered and her gold was stolen from her and buried in the basement right there. And it was this apparent ghost in the Camp O'Lane basement that was the center of that two-hour-long argument at the church the following day, which ultimately prompted Hannah, her husband, Harriet, the Favel family to get up and storm out to go protect the Campolain apartment, and then also the secondary group followed right after them, really just to see if they were going to go confront the ghost, because a lot of people thought that's what they're going to go do.

And that is basically what Hannah, her husband, and her friends ended up doing. They decided the two men would go down into the basement and attempt to dig up the floor in hopes that they might find this gold that was stolen from this murdered woman and buried in the basement. But they obviously did not find the gold, which ultimately led to Hannah going down and passing out, and then Harriet also passing out. Hannah and Harriet would wake up after passing out. And when they woke up, they would tell these terrifying stories about what they saw. Hannah said she went down the stairs, she went over to the window where all the crowd was looking in, and she managed to get this curtain up. And then she yelled upstairs to her husband and her friends that she was coming back up. But when Hannah actually turned around to go to the stairs, she realized the ghost was in the basement with her. There was this old woman wearing a white gown standing between Hannah and the stairs. She was blocking her way. And this woman was staring at Hannah really intently. And then Hannah screamed, and this ghost charged at Hannah and basically went through her body.

And it was at that point that Hannah passed out onto the ground. As for Harriet, when she came to, her story was even more terrifying. Harriet said, after she placed that wet towel on Hannah's head, she looked up and she saw the woman in white walking up the stairs, staring directly at Harriet. And Harriet, she froze and leaned back and just stare at this woman. And the woman, she came right to the top of the stairs. She stopped in the doorway, and then she opened up her mouth, grotesquely wide, and just continued to stare directly at Harriet. And then with slow trembling hands, the woman began taking off her nightgown, which eventually fell to the ground. And Harriet saw this woman was covered in cuts and gashes all over her chest and neck. And then Harriet let out a scream, and she passed out, too. Not long after Hannah and Harriet both came to and told their horrible stories, the police arrived outside and dispersed the big crowd, which meant Hannah and her husband could finally leave and go back to their own apartment. And they would. But just 12 hours later, Hannah would die.

The Sheffield coroner held an inquest into Hannah's death, but he could find no scientific explanation for why Hannah actually died. And so on her death certificate, it basically says she died of fright. She was literally scared to death. Following Hannah's very bizarre and basically unexplained death, Harriet, who would survive, and the Favel family, they just moved out. They could not stand to be at that apartment any longer. And then also many more people who lived inside of this tenement apartment building on Campbell Lane, they also moved out because, again, it was just too terrifying to be near this basement. To this day, we still don't have a better explanation for what happened to Hannah. She was in good health, all things considered, when she died. And so really, this didn't make any sense. And so this case still is one of the only in recorded history where somebody apparently died just from getting scared. Late one night in the spring of 1937, a young woman stumbled into her New York City apartment building, drunk from a long night of partying with friends. She made her way up the steps and reached her apartment door. And after she opened it up, she stepped inside and her little dog ran up to say hello.

And so she gave her dog a pet. And then she walked towards her bedroom. But the moment she stepped foot into that pitch black bedroom, something just felt off. It was too quiet. But before she could figure out why that was, something heavy came flying out of the darkness and hit her on the face. And for a moment, the woman just stood there, stunned. And then a second later, something else emerged from the darkness. Two hands. So that's going to do it. If you enjoyed today's story, be sure to check out our podcast called the Mr. Ballon Podcast, where we have hundreds of stories, a lot like this one, that are only available on the podcast. They are not on YouTube. Again, the podcast is just called the Mr. Ballin' Podcast, and it's available on Amazon Music.