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Leanne:

Wasting Company Time presents Tell No Tales, season two. Episode 4.5: Liberating History

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[SFX: Folk music and loud chatter can be heard for a moment, until a door is closed and both become muffled]

LOUISA

Sorry about that, everyone’s been absolutely amazing since the sit-in started, but the only downside of having a huge community show up is that there’s basically never a quiet moment. It’s much calmer down here though. We mostly just use the basement to store food and drink supplies.

JULIA

Don’t worry about it, seriously, it was lovely to meet everyone! Plus, this is where the ghost hangs out, right?

LOUISA

Yeah, best we can tell.

RILEY

Mind if we record this?

LOUISA

Please do, we’ve had a few reporters in since this whole thing started, but you two are definitely the most interesting call I’ve had so far.

JULIA

(A LITTLE FLIRTATIOUS) I get that a lot. Not on the job or anything, I’m just an interesting person.

LOUISA

(LAUGHS)

RILEY

(ALREADY SICK OF THIS) So, Louisa.

[SFX: Recording begins]

can you tell us a bit about what you’re doing here, for the record.

LOUISA

Yeah, so, I’m Louisa Truman, the founder of Liberating History. We’re an organisation dedicated to amplifying and preserving queer history. There have been huge strides recently in the celebration of queer history, the Queer Britain museum in King’s Cross, for example, but so much of our history has slipped through the cracks, in part because so much of the movement was defined by the working class, which is too often overlooked when curating museums and exhibitions. Places like the Coronation Club, though, are the very lifeblood of Britain’s queer history. This club offered sanctuary for the LGBTQIA community from 1928 to 2013. And, not only was this a safe haven by night, but by day, this very basement was a space for one of the breakout groups from the British Gay Liberation Front to meet and organise. The Coronation Club was a place where queer activists gathered to demand the right to be treated with protection and dignity. Now, we fight as queer activists to ensure their struggle is represented with the protection and dignity that they dedicated their lives to fight for.

JULIA

Wow. Did you rehearse that? Because that’s impressive as hell.

LOUISA

I’ve, uh, given the same speech a few times by now, yeah.

RILEY

Alright Julia, if you’re done being an irredeemable flirt, Louisa, what can you tell us about the spirit in this basement?

LOUISA

(A LITTLE FLUSTERED) Um, yeah, uh… well, we don’t know a lot, honestly. They’re definitely strongest here in the basement, we’ve all felt the kind of… chill down here. There are some other manifestations too, like ever since we started meeting here, there’s been this… it sounds really weird, but this strong sense of community. Obviously, we have that anyway, but it’s hard to describe better than that. Especially when the sit-in started, it comes in waves sometimes, just this overwhelming sense of peace and togetherness. We all notice when it happens.

JULIA

Don’t worry, that makes perfect sense. There was this ghost I spoke to once, her name was Miruna, and her manifestation was making queer couples in an airport feel like the only people in the room. I actually went back to see her recently and got a tattoo from her, wanna see?

RILEY

Julia, you did not.

JULIA

Did too! Look!

RILEY

For fucks’ sake.

LOUISA

Okay so clearly you two know what you’re doing when it comes to ghosts.

RILEY

One of us does, at least. So, they’re a category two then? You haven’t seen anything being picked up or moved around, as if by someone physical?

LOUISA

No, not quite, though we’ve had some close calls. Things twitching, small things being knocked over. We’ve done a bit of research, and they seem just on the verge of what I think you’d call a category three?

RILEY

Right, okay, so hopefully that gives us a solid time span to go off. Julia, your recorder, does it have a functional EMF reader at least?

JULIA

Yup, I didn’t even need to build that part, Leo basically just frankensteined an industry-standard EMF meter into the recording device.

RILEY

That’s useful, at least. We can grab some readings, Better Place has software that can give fairly accurate predictions of when a spirit died based on current EMF activity. Or it used to be accurate, it’s been glitching a bit recently. But we’ll make do. Louisa, how much info do you have on the old patrons of this club?

LOUISA

We’ve got some, but very little prior to the nineties. There are a few old log books that were used to keep track of tabs and debts back in the earlier days of the club’s lifetime, but it exclusively uses code names for obvious reasons. We do have a fair amount of documentation of the chapter of the Gay Liberation Front that met here, though.

RILEY

Anything you can get could help. If there’s a chance the spirit was a member, that makes things a lot easier.

JULIA

Think you’ve got enough to work with?

RILEY

Barely. But I’ve worked with less.

JULIA

They’re a research genius.

RILEY

(OBVIOUSLY PLEASED WITH THEMSELVES) You don’t have to say it but… I am.

LOUISA

I believe it. So what’s the plan, once you figure out who our ghost is?

JULIA

Well, when I get our recorder working, we can interview them. You keep doing the good work, keeping the new buyer from removing them, getting press attention. Then when it’s ready, we’d like to publish the interview with this spirit. It furthers both our agendas, we let the public know that spirits have a voice, and ideally, this spirit uses their voice to talk about how important the Coronation Club was to them. They manifested here, so it’s a safe bet that it was a place of importance.

LOUISA

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you both, for reaching out.

JULIA

Thank you for accepting! You’re helping us out too.

RILEY

If you’re done, Julia? Shall we get some readings and go?

JULIA

Right, sure. I’ve got your number though Louisa, and I’ll be grabbing the volunteer sign-up sheet on my way out. Hope you don’t mind us poking around, ghost! Sorry for talking about you like you’re not in the room, we’ll chat soon, promise!

RILEY

(MUTTERED) Yeah, if we can get our shit together.

[SFX: Recording ends]

Closing theme (short version) begins

Leanne:

This episode of Tell No Tales was written and produced by Leanne Egan. In it, you heard the voices of Josie Thomas as Louisa, Phil Thompson as Riley, and Shannon Kelly as Julia. Thank you for listening, and remember: the dead don’t bite.

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