One of the things I love most about this project has been how it’s led to me meeting so many fascinating, generous and generally awesome people! Honestly, I’ve crossed paths with some amazing folks that I never would have encountered if it wasn’t for Revenants on the Redway, and it’s been an absolute delight.
Tonight’s story is a perfect example of that, and something very different from the posts I usually share with you. Not least because for once, there’s no single square I can pin this one into! My witness tonight has covered the entire grid over the years, and is intimately acquainted with its darker side: it’s my great pleasure to be able to introduce Wade Radford. These days, Wade is a renowned poet, filmmaker and the creator of the award-winning documentary ‘The Busby & Me’ that unearths the lost ghost-hunting footage of his teenage investigation into the cursed ‘Busby Chair’, restored after vanishing for seventeen years.
However, he grew up right here in Milton Keynes, and shares my deep love for the city and the belief that there’s more to it than meets the eye. We got talking after I posted an update about my project on a local Facebook group which just goes to show that the most fascinating stories can come from the unlikeliest of places! As you know, this project is still in its early stages, and when we got talking, it was lovely to discover just how enthusiastic and encouraging he was about what I’m doing here. It was especially reassuring for me, as I’m not any kind of expert and often feel like a bit of an imposter when speaking to people who really know their stuff in this field. His warmth and genuine interest instantly put me at ease, and made me even more excited to keep going.
You see, back in the early 2000s, Wade was a creator way ahead of his time, running a homegrown ghost-hunting MySpace series broadcasting late-night investigations from local haunted pubs, eerie ruins and shadowed backstreets, long before the era of monetised, mainstream ghost-hunting shows. He shared the interview below where he reflected on those days, and I had the best time watching it!
When I wasn’t trying to spot locations I knew, I was blown away by how inventive, fearless, and downright entertaining their investigations were! I loved the eerie EVPs and unexplained light anomalies and massively admired the sheer brass neck of teenage Wade talking his way into pubs and Jacobean manors armed with little more than pocket-money cameras and boundless enthusiasm.
When I wrote back to say how much I’d enjoyed the film, Wade kindly offered to be interviewed if I had any questions and, well, I had plenty. He answered them all with warmth and generosity, and it was a joy to explore his memories of those early days, his thoughts on Milton Keynes, and the current resurgence of paranormal storytelling. The Swan Revived is now firmly on my must-visit list!
Before we dive into the full interview, I want to say a huge thank you to Wade, not just for sharing his time and memories, but for being so wonderfully generous – I’m now the proud owner of a signed copy of the The Busby & Me DVD and the accompanying book, complete with the most encouraging note about this project! Like I said – the people I’m meeting around this really are the best.
Note: Sadly, the banner at the top is pure artistic licence – this interview was not conducted in the ruins of St. Peter’s Church at midnight 😉
Going back to the ghosts: an interview with Wade Radford, August 2025
Origin story
It was such a surprise – and a delight – to discover that Milton Keynes had its very own paranormal show, I wish I’d known about it back when you were making it! Can you recap how it all got started and what those early days were like?
I’d grown up with my father recording pretty much everything on Video8 tapes, and as such when I got to about eleven years old I started doing exactly the same. At about thirteen years old, this was around 2003, I started getting into the idea of Ghosts, and the fact that I may also be able to capture things on video as evidence. Initially, this started out as incredibly infantile sleepovers with friends, with the lights down and night vision on. As I got more interested I started setting up tripods in my room, and the study in my own house. These early ‘investigations’ were copied onto VHS tapes, and many, as you’d expect are lost to time. I carried on doing this over the next few years, and in 2007 I met Victoria Howlett, who shared the same spooky interests as me. We decided to try and launch our own show, and to air it via MySpace.
All images © Wade Radford, shared with permission.
It never really worked out in the long run, with minimal attention, so you can imagine my surprise when my film ‘The Busby & Me’ was released last year, and its subsequent extra feature ‘I was a Teenage Ghost Hunter’, in which I got to recount the adventures of something no-one had ever heard of, but that we’d given our all to way back when. My career in the early 2010’s took an entirely different direction in film & the arts, so, this has felt real full circle as I hadn’t talked about it for years!
Local haunts
You’ve said that places around Milton Keynes and the three counties really shaped your early investigations. Which locations were the most important in those early days, and do any of them still linger in your mind now?
Indeed, when we first started out all we had was Milton Keynes. Over time we started to raise funds in various ways to go further afield, but those early days were incredibly M.K based.
If indeed the Paranormal exists, then Milton Keynes’ relatively new build is immaterial. The towns and villages that surround it have been there for time – Even if they weren’t, surely something has been everywhere at some point?
You’ll have to bear with me somewhat, I’m going to do my best to recall what I can – some of this is twenty years ago and many of the original master tapes are MIA.
A place that sticks out a lot was the Swan Revived in Newport Pagnell. It was one of our early successes. We were in a corridor off of the function room, and a lock off camera caught the door slamming shut from the other side to where we were. Off the top of my head (and there will be more) we investigated the New Inn, in New Bradwell, The Bull in Olney, the George in Stony Stratford, The Woburn Sands Institute, Sherington Village Hall, The White Hart Sherington, Galloways, in Woburn Sands, The North Crawley Institute, St. Peters Ruins, The Cock in North Crawley… and I’ve no doubt there are more!
All images © Wade Radford, shared with permission.
I think in terms of feeling especially uneasy, and that something was certainly around ‘Galloways’ in Woburn Sands we investigated twice. There was something about the place, bangs in the night, a particularly active cellar area – If memory serves me correctly, Galloways is a Jacobean building, and when the lights go down and everyone leaves the premises, I don’t know … It just felt uncomfortable!
If anything, prior to the start of our show my Mam’s house is, and was always incredibly active. Sadly, I can’t give away its location, but as a child I had seen a full apparition, the spirit of a dog, something ran towards me in the garden, I commanded a light anomaly on camera to go in the directions I wanted it to… and on and on and on. Strangely, when I did an interview for a Northamptonshire paper in 2008, I recounted the story that following my grandfather’s death in the year 2000 (long prior to our show), I’d have a recurring dream in which I went through a type of lobby, down into a dark cellar and he’d be sat on a throne, in full pomp, with a crown and staff. It was only in 2007 when we filming that I realised the dreams that had kept recurring years before, were indeed of The Swan Revived – I’d never been in there prior to the investigation!
St Peter’s & unexpected activity
The very early clip of you all spending the night up at St Peter’s church ruins really grabbed me. It’s such an atmospheric spot, which makes it almost more surprising that you had a ‘silent night’ there! In your experience, were the most active places always the ones you’d expect? Or did some of the modern, everyday locations surprise you?
I think if memory serves me, St Peters WAS a quiet night, but I think the clip from the video was actually another quiet night at Segenhoe ruins, not far from Woburn Sands. St Peters is indeed atmospheric, but strangely I never much felt drawn there, not for any ghostly goings on. That may have been due to lack of experience; St Peters was our first evening as a team for the show – subsequently, we never did an episode cut of it.
Locations always surprised me – I didn’t expect to name Galloways the top haunted location in M.K – Well, aside my parents home! The Swan Revived is creepy though, it’s just a feeling you get, even in the guest rooms. Outside of these two, I remember picking up some really strange sounds on a set of baby monitors we had at the New Inn in New Bradwell.
It isn’t M.K based, but we got called to a home in Leighton Buzzard in 2010 – occupied by a young couple! That night we caught light anomalies, had stuff chucked across the room, and all manner of activities.
All images © Wade Radford, shared with permission.
EVPs!
The one you highlight in the video was chilling – for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, it’s a clear and rather monstrous growl/snarl. I’m pretty level-headed when it comes to most things, but there’s something about a voice where there shouldn’t be one that hits differently to a knock or a shadow. Why do you think EVPs in particular carry that extra level of dread?
I think it’s a lot about interpretation and response. We don’t expect to capture voice audios, so when it does happen it is astounding. It can also cause us to question much about what we thought we believed in. I’ve been lucky enough to capture two interesting audios, one at The Golden Fleece in York, and of course, the notorious voice response at ‘The Busby Stoop Inn’. I also think they are less surprising than they once were because it has been watered down by a constant stream of nonsense on the television with Alice boxes, and ‘demons’! I think modern paranormal broadcasts hold their audiences completely in contempt!
MK’s reputation
Milton Keynes gets unfairly written off as concrete and soulless, but I know we both feel it has its own kind of magic. What do you think makes this city special, and maybe even a little bit haunted?
Ghost stories and legends are as old as time – Milton Keynes shouldn’t be any different. I feel like Milton Keynes has an energy all of its own, something about the lay lines. When I was growing up the legend of Bobby Bannister near MK haunted us, I can’t even be sure where his grave was said to be – Passmore, maybe? Then you’ve got the Devil’s Oak in Woburn Woods, the rumoured satanists of the sixties at Segenhoe, the demonic alleged entities nearby in Clophill & the Devil’s Leap Stone in Marston Moretaine – I’m sure there are countless others!
Milton Keynes is unique, from its non-paranormal design, to its connection in the centre with the sun settings from Avebury boulevard etc – There does seem to be a sort of Pagan vibe with much of its design and ‘ways’. As we continue to grow as a city, I’m sure the stories of the supernatural will continue to evolve.
Looking back
Looking back on all those nights spent chasing ghosts as a teenager, what do you think you really found? Was it answers about the paranormal, or was it something more personal about yourself and the people you shared it with?
Oh, there is no short answer to this – I attempted to explain it in my publication of the book ‘The Busby & Me’. I’m very fond of what we did, and after hiding in ‘embarrassment’ for years about it, I feel like it’s really cool! A few people have now said we were on the ‘cutting edge’, I don’t know if that is correct, but it does feel like we were a part of something that is now so ingrained in culture. For its many flaws, from finances to navigating teenage relationships, it was a focus for us. I made friends I still know to this day, honed skills that I would take forward to a career, and we all certainly obtained vital needs like confidence at a teenage age.
What did we find? When I look at it as a whole, or at least the tapes I’ve been able to restore, probably very little! But there are some seriously intriguing moments. They are few and far between, like much evidence in this field, but enough to keep me open minded.
Aside from my Busby Stoop odyssey, which was incredible, we had an incident with motion sensors (that can be seen on ‘I was a Teenage Ghost Hunter), and I felt that incredible. We had used them for a few years, they’d never gone off, and then BAM! On command each time. We changed the batteries, and still they went off on command. We did a seance, and asked who they were trying to contact, and it was a member of the crew whose wonderful Nan had recently passed on. Absolutely spectacular!
Digital Ghosts
MySpace is a shadow of its former self, much of what you filmed back then has already been lost to time, and who knows, one day platforms like YouTube might go the same way. Does it feel a little eerie to be the custodian of these surviving tapes, like you’re preserving ghosts of the internet as well as ghosts in old buildings?
Certainly! I thought it was all lost until last year when I found a box, within it was about twenty raw master Hi8 tapes, and a stack of badly degraded CD-R discs. ‘I was a Teenage Ghost Hunter’ could not have been constructed without that surviving footage. This experience made us know our home counties and also took us outside of it, throughout Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, to Yorkshire, Nottingham & London.
I dig Myspace, and I miss it! It was a great platform for sharing, it didn’t feel as insular as Facebook is starting to feel. We had a low audience, but nowadays with over saturation, we’d have been lucky for anyone to have seen it. We got to go on BBC radio shows often in the places we were filming in, we even returned to the Swan Revived with BBC Radio doing a live seance with us – the ghosts didn’t show… typical!
In 2009 we also did Milton Keynes Paranormal Convention – I’d like to say it was the first, but I’m not sure … It was certainly early on!
All images © Wade Radford, shared with permission.
I don’t find it ‘eerie’ having the tapes, it’s fantastic, even if just for my many changing teenage hair styles and colours! We got a lot of ‘flack’ for making our show, rude comments, people not taking us seriously, jokes when we went into pubs, or taunting from others – we were the weird kids spending our evenings doing this! For a long time I didn’t talk about it all because of all that, but I’m properly proud of it now – I know a few of the team also still feel incredibly fond of what we attempted to achieve.
The Paranormal Is Everywhere
We definitely seem to be in the middle of a resurgence of interest in the paranormal. Why do you think it’s having such a big moment right now? How does it compare to when you first started out?
I think I possibly answered this in the last question – But I’ll add that equipment is so much more available, at a lot cheaper prices. I think that others are so lost in the daily grind, and that the world seems stupidly ugly at times that others want to obtain proof of something more as well!
On the flip side of that, monetising videos is the thing of now, which means we are so much more exposed to fraud. We weren’t monetising videos when we were doing it, we had nothing to gain, nor lose. It is difficult to not be suspicious now when the internet just seems to be a portal for ‘hustling’ on videos, and with the advent of A.I.
We may have a lot more exposure to the paranormal now, but it will never be the same again – technology has gone too far!
Thank-you again to Wade for everything, and thank YOU for reading!
If you have a story of your own to share, I’d really love to hear it.
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