Or his dad was suffering very poor MH, including psychotic episodes, and obsessive behaviour focused on the ouija board, before he died?
My own grandfather believed all his life that he’d been cursed when his first wife died in childbirth, leaving him with two young sons, at the same time as a run of poor crops and cattle deaths on the farm, which he eventually lost — he was hospitalised three times in the brutal conditions of the day. Two of his sons, one from each of his marriages, had catastrophically poor MH. And it’s evident in the next generation, too.
It seems fairly clear to me, piecing things together, that a land grabbing neighbour exploited a fragile man so he got the land cheap, but the poor MH, whether cause or effect, was certainly real, and is still evident in his descendants.
But of course the sceptic on a podcast can’t just start diagnosing a clearly vulnerable man, and Bridget couldn’t ask the obvious questions about the blood on the walls after the ‘exorcism’ — ‘Who else had a key? Are you certain no one was able to enter the house while the vicar was there before you locked up? Are any of your friends or acquaintances cruel enough to play a sadistic ‘prank’ like this?’
Because (despite only hearing the ‘Post-mortem’ podcast so I didn’t encounter any of the friends I believe were on the tv show), the thing that strikes me forcibly is that while Julian clearly found it comforting his friends said they’d experienced things too, the fact that this was widely known about in the village both opens up social contagion as an obvious factor, but also the possibility of cruel pranks.