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The 3rd August 2020 – 3rd August 2021 was Stephen and Yhana‘s first year on YouTube – To celebrate they are sharing one video a day across all of their favourite social media platforms – Facebook Page, Twitter and Website, as well as a daily shout out on their youtube community page. – So please check often incase you missed any of their videos during that first year.
They have also published their very first youtube almanac – Which was released 3rd august 2021.
The book will be available to buy via Amazon shortly – Although you can get a free signed copy by signing up and supporting their journey on Patreon
All Patreon‘s will get a regular mention on YouTube and on their channel publications – As your support is very much appreciated and will help to purchase filming equipment and trips to historical sites, so they can keep their films coming.
The Ghost Of Thomas Baker Of Melbury Bubb | Dorset Ghost Story
13 Terrifying True Stories For Halloween | Story Four | The Ghost Of Thomas Baker Of Melbury Bubb
By Stephen Robert Kuta
And Roger Guttridge
IT was a damp, foggy night in November 1865 when a seven-year-girl and her parents heard the faint sounds of something approaching them as they walked along Murderers’ Lane at Melbury Bubb.
“We heard the breathing of a horse, and then we saw it coming round the bend, pulling a cart,” the girl recalled more than 80 years later. “The lantern lights were dim at first but presently we heard creaking wheels, the lights were brighter and the horse’s breathing heavier. It was all so real and natural.”
The little girl’s father ordered his wife and daughter to “stand aside in the ditch and let Thomas Baker’s horse and cart go past”, adding that he had seen them before. The father stood on one side of the lane, mother and daughter on the other.
Speaking in 1949, the daughter, by then aged 90, recalled: “As the horse and cart came past, I shut my eyes. I felt so frightened, but I felt it pass. When I looked again, ’twas gone. All around was the pitch-black night. But it’s all so plain to me now at 90 as when I was a little maid of seven.”
Since her story was published in the 1949-50 edition of The Dorset Year Book, the tale of Thomas Baker and his horse and cart has become one of Dorset’s better-known ghost stories.
Welcome to the forth of our 13 terrifying stories for Halloween, today we are going to take a deep dive into the ghost story of Thomas Baker of Melbury Bubb. This is a true story, and makes up just one of the dark and twisted tales that exist in my family history.
A clue to the events behind this ghost story can be found in Melbury Bubb churchyard, where a broken gravestone records the death of farmer Thomas alias William Baker, who was “barbarously murdered on Bubdowne Hill November 10, 1694”.
Baker was driving his horse and cart home with two bags of golden guineas slung across his saddlebags, the proceeds of his sale of corn and cattle at Dorchester Market.
Two men became aware of his riches and lay in wait on Bubb Down Hill. As Farmer Baker approached, one of them lobbed a stone, which hit the farmer in the head. Baker fell to the ground but his startled horse kept going and made its own way back to the farm with the moneybags still draped over the saddlebags.
A search party later found the missing man dead on the ground where he fell. The robbers, of course, were long gone.
Seven years passed before any further information about the crime came to light – and it only did so then because of the astuteness of the landlord of the King’s Arms at Evershot.
One day in 1701 he overheard two of his customers quarrelling over money – and discussing the killing of Farmer Baker. He sent for assistance and the two inebriated customers were overpowered and held in the Evershot village lock-up overnight.
Next day, securely manacled, they were taken along the old highway known as Long Ash Lane (now part of the A37 Yeovil to Dorchester road) to the county jail.
At the next Dorchester Assizes, the pair were convicted and sentenced to be “taken to the tree by which they did commit wilful murder, there to be gibbeted in chains to suffer death. And we charge that none may succour them in their need and distress. And may the Lord have mercy on your souls.”
The task of making the cage fell to the Evershot village blacksmith. It was made of iron bars and included rests for the men’s necks and buttocks.
The cage was fixed to a tree at the scene of the crime with the men secured by chains and guarded by watchmen to await their fate.
They were still alive when an old countrywoman named Martha Spigot, passing the gibbet on her way back from Yeovil and presumably not knowing the order for them not to receive any succour, heard the killers’ desperate pleas for water and took pity.
She had no water to offer but instead fished a couple of tallow candles from her basket and pushed one into each man’s mouth.
Poor Martha also now found herself in trouble and, according to local tradition, was sentenced to seven years in the county jail.
The two murderers soon succumbed to the inevitable but more than 300 years later there are still reminders of their deed. The scene of their crime is still known as Gibbet Pit while the route followed by Farmer Baker’s horse and cart after his death is called Murderers’ Lane.
to this day, His ghost is still said to haunt the lane where he was murdered, and maybe, just maybe the cries of pity from the condemned men tethered inside their gibbets can be heard too.
Are you brave enough to walk that lane alone.
- Published: 21 October 2020
- Location: Melbury Bubb, Dorset
- Duration: 9:11
- Photography – Stephen Robert Kuta / Yhana Kuta
- Written by – Stephen Robert Kuta
Music –
- Drone Dark Scary
Music Licensed by Epidemic Sound
Stephen and Yhana – History and Adventure Hunters Almanac
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On the 30th of January, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). In the following weeks, the virus quickly spread worldwide, forcing the governments of affected countries to implement lockdown measures to decrease transmission rates and prevent the overload of hospital emergency rooms.
The United Kingdom implemented lockdown on the 16th of March, 2020 and from this date and up until the 3rd August, 2021 the UK had suffered three national lockdowns which all included Restrictive measures on border controls, closing of schools, markets, restaurants, nonessential shops, bars, entertainment and leisure facilities, as well as a ban on all public and private events and gatherings. In between these lockdowns we saw tier systems and heavy restrictions on how we all lived our lives.
We all decided on different approaches on how we spent that free time as many people were on Furlough as their businesses were shut, only key-workers carried out their working duties. Although I continued working as a key-worker, I still had a lot more free time as Yhana was not at school.
Both Yhana and I spent those first few months experimenting with tiktok and photography, we explored our home village of Great Leighs and took some incredible photographs as spring and eventually summer took hold.
Tiktok was a short-lived adventure for us, although we enjoyed it all the same — tiktok like so many Social Media platforms had exploded during the pandemic but none more so then YouTube.
In 2020 alone YouTube had more than 9 billion views globally
66% of people used YouTube to develop a new hobby in 2020, and a whopping 94% of people in India used YouTube to learn to do things themselves, Whilst Globally, 82% used YouTube to the same. What were they learning to do, exactly?
• Views of beauty tutorials increased nearly 50% in 2020.
• There was a 90% increase in bike maintenance and repair videos.
• Daily views of videos with “raising chickens” in the title increased 160%.
• Videos related to learning guitar saw 160 million views from mid-March to mid-April.
• Videos about container gardening saw 6 million views in the same period.
• There was a 215% increase in daily uploads of videos related to self-care.
• There was a 458% increase in daily views of videos about making sourdough bread and a 200% increase in daily views of recipe videos for bubble tea.
• Videos of how-to videos for home haircuts also spiked in April.
Even though these giant increases in YouTube views began as early as March 2020, it took Yhana and I up until August of that year to begin our own channel, and Yhana’s encouragement certainly helped on that matter.
So it began, 3 August 2020 – We went out and filmed our very first video. To be honest I wasn’t sure what our plan would be for our channel, I had a rough idea of what kind of content I would like Yhana and I to make and as a historian I looked at the channel as a way to record at least one year of our life, not just any year either, but our life during the Covid-19 Pandemic. So for me, it was a great way to record a piece of social history.
This book in front of you developed from that period of our lives also, and is a showcase / diary / almanac of all the videos we created, many of the photographs we took, the treasure hunts we went on and some of the incredible finds we discovered just a short walk from where we lived. In truth, those finds would never have been discovered if it wasn’t for lockdown.
So for prosperity, social history, a window into our lives during the Covid-19 pandemic and a transparent visual look at what its like to create a YouTube channel in that first year including channelytics, descriptions of videos, thumbnail artwork, viewer comments and more.
We have written this full guide, our first joint book –
Stephen and Yhana – History and Adventure Hunters Almanac.
The book is available to buy through Amazon and via all good bookshops.
LINK BELOW –
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