Tristan Redman’s Ghost Story

[MrsFrumble]

I’ve just finished listening to the series after seeing it recommended on another thread and wondered if anyone was up for discussing it.

While the spooky stuff was fun and the murder “mystery” was intriguing, I found the Dancy family dynamics most interesting part, especially how invested the older generation were in the legend of “Faether”, even at the expense of his genuinely accomplished wife. A bit like most of the episodes of The Gift on BBC Sounds, it made me reflect on how little I know about my family history, and how little it bothers me that I don’t know. Maybe because I’m not posh and (probably) don’t have a line of accomplished and influential ancestors and so haven’t based my identity around that.

I loved the reading of Naomi’s eulogy with all of her achievements in the penultimate episode, especially as the younger generation of her family didn’t even know her name when the investigation began. The tribute to Maurice in the final episode was moving too. That psychic medium bloke was as dodgy as anything though… 🤣

They were really invested weren’t they?

I suspect that Faether was a narcissist who conditioned his children to idolise his bullshit and so it went in to their children.

The fact that he wrote to an author was horrible. He was bragging about his wife’s murder.

He certainly was a self-aggrandising dick. And it all came across as very patriarchal; Kate was the first female member of the family to have her accomplishments listed, and Hugh says something specifically about brilliance of the male Dancy bloodline, so there’s no wonder that Naomi was so easily erased.

I feel like TR backed off in the end and was happy to go with the conclusion of the seance that Faether wasn’t guilty because he didn’t want to further piss off his in-laws, which was a shame, especially in light of the dodgy circumstances surrounding the second wife’s death. He could have done a second series!

I recommend listening to Laura Richards' podcast Crime Analyst (available on usual platforms, I get it free on Antennapod), starting episode 167. Laura and Jackie Malton (real detective whom D.I. Tennison was based on) were asked to analyse the death of Dr Naiomi Dancy in Tristan Redman's podcast but their contributions were mostly cut. They were hacked off by this because they have a detailed theory about what really happened to her which they felt Redman had chickened out of exploring because of his wife's family. They look at the whole case in Crime Analyst. A damning story about 'Fayther'.

I'd also recommend Laura Richard's review. She's also has a couple of Crime Analyst episodes from December 2024 where she had Tristan on as a guest and was able to question him about his editorial choices- she is very good at asking him direct, quite critical questions.

Oh wow, thank you @BinaryDot and @MrsMaudeLebowski ! It’s free on the Apple Podcasts app for me, so I’ll definitely give it a listen.