by Denise Mina
‘I stop. I stare at the boy. I blink but the boy is still there. A boy? What? I approached him and I said “Hello?” But the boy didn’t answer me. I asked the boy: “Is your father on board?” The boy looked up. He didn’t look at me, just, sort of, up. Then the boy speaks. His voice is clear but his lips don’t move, he says, “Loto Vady.” But… that boy didn’t look like a ghost in a film, he isn’t see-through or floating around or anything. Haha! No! Is just a sad wet boy, lost in the night.
‘So, I am wondering, how does a boy get on a boat in the night? Well, he could not have come here tonight, he must have been here all along. Maybe a member of the crew has smuggled their child on board with them? Many of us, we’re unemployed fishermen. Paid only on the end of the voyage, no upfront payment, no banks, so can’t send money home. What do you do with the children? So: maybe someone has no family to leave their child with and they bring him and hide him on board, maybe? I don’t know.
‘Anyway, I can see he is close to the edge, he is upset and I know I should get him away from there.
‘I hold my hand out. This boy doesn’t move or look up.
‘“Loto,” I say.’ He was singing in a gentle, coaxing voice. ‘“Loto, my dear, take my hand, please?” And I stepped towards the boy.
‘We are close to the edge. I glance down for a split second to check my steps. I glance back up and–WHAT? That boy is gone!
‘I run to the edge and look over. Nothing!
‘I am in a panic. Very frighten. Where is this boy? I was a young man and didn’t know what to do, so I wake the rest of the crew and ask: who brought this little kid on board? A boy called Loto Vady? I describe him.
‘The crew, they laughed at me. I am seeing things. Maybe there is a gas leak next to my bunk. The captain comes down and hears what happened.
‘I am Maltese. I speak Maltese, English and Italian. Little Spanish, some Turkish. But I didn’t speak Polish. The captain speaks Polish. He say: “loto wady” is Polish. It is not a boy’s name. It means “icy cold”.’
There was a pause before Trina Keany came back on to speak:
This story became an urban myth. It was told in occultist magazines and around campfires. A journalist with an eye for a moneymaker contacted the Clarkes and convinced them that he could write a book about it.
They agreed, a contract was drawn up, they got a publishing deal but there wasn’t enough to fill a book. Someone thought they saw a boy, a boy had died, there were odd sounds and strange smells. Sinister, but it made no narrative sense. So one night the Clarkes and the journalist met in a London hotel room, got drunk and hashed out a proper story.
In this new version, Angelika Larkos was the mother of seven boys, not five. She is still alive, remember, when this book comes out. No one fact-checked anything at the time. The night before her marriage to Andris, she had held a seance with her sisters–this was all totally made up by the Clarkes and their co-author. In the fictional seance Angelika became possessed by an ancient Polish demon called a ‘bies’, the same demon that had possessed her recently deceased grandmother.
In Polish folklore ‘bies’ are demons who bring terror and dread to those around them. They rob the free will from those they possess, use them as slaves until the person’s mind cannot take any more and they break down, never to recover. Bies suck the life force from people around them, take their warmth, hence they are always accompanied by an abrupt drop in temperature. It’s the sort of cold that starts inside and worms its way to the skin. Bies possess a person by degrees, so the person can appear normal for long periods of time until suddenly, without warning, they push you off a bridge, burn your house down, attack a stranger. Perhaps the most brutal aspect of a bies possession is those periods when the person is aware of the terrible things they have done.
Like a lot of folklore, this has some basis in fact. Angelika’s family have a history of schizophrenia. Bies possession may have been a useful explanation at a time when schizophrenia was little understood.
In the Clarkes’ story, Angelika’s possession was intermittent over the first few years of her marriage. The demon was waiting for the birth of her seventh child.
As an aside: the numbers three and seven feature prominently in all world religions and many myths and legends. The significance of the seventh child was supposed to be that the power of the bies would be stronger or transferable to a seventh child. But, honestly, the theology of The Haunting of the Dana hasn’t been thought out terribly well. They were drinking and in a hurry to meet their publishing deadline.
According to the new version of the story, Angelika knew what was happening and tried to warn her husband, her mother, her other sons, but she wasn’t believed. She was sent to a sanatorium and couldn’t protect her seventh son. So her seventh son, in his seventh year, became possessed and was lured to the side of the Dana and drowned. Ever since then malevolent bies have lingered on the Dana, using the ghost boy as bait for souls to feed on.
The book had a creepy cover design of a small boy silhouetted on the prow of the Dana, seen from the deck. It was so famous at the time that it was parodied by Saturday Night Live.
The book sold millions worldwide. Amid much fanfare, a movie company bought the film rights and the Dana itself which they used as a promotional device.
The movie was very successful. The Exorcist, The Omen and The Amityville Horror had been smash hits and The Haunting of the Dana seemed to ride the tail of the occult movie craze. A sequel followed. The Dana II. Then, a decade later, a low-budget reboot, Dana: the Revenge, but interest had faded.
The yacht was put up for sale. Anyone who could afford a private yacht wanted one that wasn’t famous for being in crappy horror movies and the Dana attracted ghoulish attention wherever it docked, which defeats the purpose of having a private yacht.
This was why Leon Parker managed to buy it so cheap and in perfect condition. The reputation of the Dana coloured all of the subsequent coverage when it sank.
In the next episode we will look at the chronology of the story breaking and how it became an international obsession.
Are you keen to cook fresh, nutritious meals that will invigorate you? Find yourself too busy? Why not try Fast’n’Fresh–
We were on the outskirts of Glasgow, approaching the high dark hills framing Loch Lomond. We still had a long way to go. I wanted to see my friend Adam Ross again. I wanted to ask him about working as crew on a private yacht. Mostly I just wanted to see someone I didn’t have to lie to.
I thought Fin had fallen asleep. I was still nervous about driving and didn’t dare glance away from the road. His breathing was shallow. He wasn’t moving. I picked up my phone, found the next episode and pressed play.
16
Episode 4: How the Story Broke
Initially the sinking of the Dana attracted little attention. A footnote in Le Figaro. A small obit in the Daily Echo, Leon’s local paper in Southampton. It was just a boating accident, a misadventure. The circumstances were strange but no one suspected foul play. In Mark Parker’s instagrammed post they were all holding glasses of champagne. They were drinking. Drunk kids, big boat, indulgent father. Sailing is dangerous.
It was the order of events, the way it unfolded, that made the story what it became.
The insurance company, expecting a big claim from Leon’s widow, initiated a sonar investigation of the seabed. They found the wreck of the Dana forty yards underwater, jammed upright against a rock. In fact, the insurance claim was never made. Gretchen Teigler never did submit a claim. That seems strange. She has a staff. It was a debt. It would be usual to ask for payment as a matter of course.
Anyway, towards the end of the summer while the sea was still diveable, the company sent a team down to film the wreck, hoping to find the cause of the accident, but something went very wrong. The diver adopted a course of action no seasoned professional would. He deviated from the dive plan, went inside, ran out of oxygen and died down there.
The film
he live-streamed to the surface vessel was reviewed by investigators. It was very disturbing. What they saw made no logical sense.
I recalled the sensation of watching the film in the dark hall, my mood low, my blood syrupy, the mounting tension of the film and its shock ending defibrillating me back into the world.
Trina Keany continued:
In the insurance film, the diver dies after finding what is left of the Parker family sitting in the dining room at the table. The change in atmospheric pressure when the diver opens the door makes it look as if the dead bodies are trying to stand up from the table.
The diamond necklace is gone from Violetta’s body. She is no longer wearing it, though the box is discernable in the shadows, sitting on the table, open and empty. There is a general agreement that the antique necklace fastening might have rotted in the salt water and the necklace could have fallen off and been buried in detritus on the floor.
But the final image on the diver’s film shows a boy’s face. It seems to materialise out of the darkness and flashes a light at him. The face looks like the boy from the film The Haunting of the Dana. It’s all very weird and creepy.
Someone leaked the film online and it went viral. If you haven’t already watched it I would suggest you don’t. It’s upsetting. It features dead bodies in a state of decay and you don’t need to see it for this podcast to make sense.
I have friends and family in the States. Talking to them after 9/11, it was clear that they did not see the footage of people leaping from the Twin Towers that we in the UK did. They didn’t see people at windows, their faceless courage, the shirts flapping. This is because broadcasters conspired not to show it and they did that on compassionate grounds. That decision could not be made now, there are too many outlets, but it did happen back then and they were right to do it. There are things that should not be seen. For me, this film is one of them.
But how did a boy get into the film? I think the image has been altered for hits. Someone pasted the picture into the movie. The question is why would anyone do that? Why would someone go to the trouble of elaborately doctoring an insurance film to make it more frightening?
Not for money: there was no paywall on the film when it was leaked.
Not for fame either because the source of the leak never came forward.
This is a sub-thread mystery: why didn’t they come forward? Did they do it as a joke for a friend in the office and they leaked it? If so I think they must have realised they would get into a lot of trouble for it. It showed actual dead people in an inappropriate way, they’d disrespectfully edited a film of dead people, and they might never work in the insurance industry again if their identities were known. It damaged the insurance company’s reputation for professional confidentiality and they could have sued and ruined whoever was responsible.
Other people say the image of the boy couldn’t have been pasted in. Bits of paper and silt can be seen moving in front of the image. Also, the diver seems to react to the boy’s face being there. It’s the boy that makes him panic and scramble for the exit.
This is the problem with speculation: it’s unsatisfying. We want clean answers and better stories than ‘maybe this’, ‘possibly that’. Real life often makes no sense.
So, a cleaner, more definitive story took hold in the popular imagination: the vengeful spirit of the Polish boy who haunted the Dana had killed the Parker family and lured the diver to his death. ‘Beis believers’ argue that the diver was hypnotised by the ghost when he approached the ship, was tricked into entering the cabin and fed the beis demon with his fear and his death. This was a film of an actual ghost and anyone who denied it was conspiring to suppress that. Deniers were actually working for the beis.
Isn’t that better than ‘I think someone may have pasted this in for a joke’?
All the different theories found their congregations.
Facebook groups and Reddit threads formed. They split into cliques. Armed with nothing but their conviction, some formed posses and took direct action, gathering in Saint-Martin to look for clues. Illegal dive expeditions were broken up by the coastguard. Ghost tours were running out to the wreck site, incredibly dangerous given its proximity to a major shipping lane. Locals hated it. Remember, this is a very exclusive holiday resort.
The town of Saint-Martin was full of bungling citizen detectives and news crews, each trying to prove what they already believed. Restaurants and cafes in the town put signs in their windows saying they would not answer questions about the Parkers: please refer all inquiries to the police. Violetta’s hotel posted a notice saying that they had returned all of her belongings to her mother because ‘Dana tourists’ were trying to bribe staff for mementos.
If you go to Saint-Martin, as I have, you’ll find that the locals won’t talk about it any more. As soon as you say ‘Dana’ they ask you to leave.
The French police investigation was a mess. Driven by headlines and hysteria, the investigation took routes that seem bizarre in the cold light of day. One police press conference centred on a discussion of whether or not ghosts really existed.
In fact, there are rational explanations for everything. The diver was not hypnotised by a ghost but he might have been offered a bonus if he retrieved the diamond necklace. That could be why he went in there. Even if he wasn’t offered a bonus, he may have seen the instagrammed picture, assumed that if he found Violetta’s body he would find a necklace worth three-quarters of a million euros. Unofficial salvaging is not that unusual and professional divers with a lot of experience sometimes take risks no one else would. They trust their experience to assess difficult situations. The story doesn’t need the supernatural to make sense.
To defuse all of the hysteria over the film, the insurance company hired Olaff Tasksson, the famous diving expert, to do a commentary and explain to audiences what they were actually seeing. Not corpses standing up to greet the damned, but a change in cabin pressure. Not a diver possessed by a beis demon but an overconfident professional taking too many chances.
The second version of the film with Tasksson’s commentary was released only three weeks later but got a fraction of the views for the first one. The world had already decided which version of the story they liked best.
Tasksson’s version is the one we have on our website. Personally, I would not urge you to watch that either.
Do you always mean to cook fresh meals from scratch–
I switched it off. ‘Have you seen that film?’
Fin said nothing but made an odd snuffling sound through his nose.
I wanted to glance at him but we were on a dark, fast road, skirting the side of Loch Lomond. Giant hills loomed over the still black water. I was unsure of my driving and the car behind me was too close for me to slow down. Their headlights were reflected in my rear-view mirror, blinding me to distance. I slowed and they slowed. They wouldn’t overtake but just stayed too close.
‘Fin, I need you to answer me so I know you’re OK.’
I heard his dry mouth make a ‘shlack’ sound as it opened and he said, ‘’M OK.’ He sounded groggy.
‘Fin, have you taken something?’
‘Nah.’ His voice was faint. ‘I’m not well…’
I don’t know anything about anorexia except that it’s dangerous. A famous man needing resuscitation in a car I was driving with a stolen ID was a complication too far today. Without the skills to drive well, I took a turn at a sign for a restaurant too quickly, flattening Fin to the window.
I knew he wasn’t dying because his hands flew up in alarm.
17
THE RESTAURANT WAS A big corrugated-iron shed, painted black. The car park was empty but the lights were on inside, the place was open.
I parked near the door.
‘Look, Fin, you’re not well enough to travel. I’m going to drop you here and you can get a taxi home.’
He looked despairingly at the rain pattering softly on the windscreen and raised a weak hand.
‘You’re too fragile, Fin. It’s another hundred miles to Fort William.’
‘I’m OK.’
‘You haven’t spoken for forty minutes.’
He looked at me with cold-eyed fury. ‘It hasn’t been the best day.’
‘Oh, really? Well, I’ve had a lovely day. I’m glad you came to my home to saddle me with looking after you because my day has been a non-stop fucking fiesta.’ This was said with a lack of warmth and excessive volume.
I got out of the car and slammed the door. I was shaking.
He got out of the car.
We stood in the rain on either side of the car. I half thought that he’d come round and we’d have a punch-up. Or was I hoping for a punch-up? Those two things often feel the same. But that isn’t what happened. He walked round the bonnet, heading into the restaurant. I locked the car and followed him.
Inside, it was an assault on all the senses. The room smelled of Christmas cake and floor cleaner. The carpet was tartan and the walls were covered in stag heads, whisky posters and swords. Fiddle music jangled around the metal room with manic cheer. The staff were all dressed in kilts and Aran jumpers but they were young and you could still see who they really were underneath, the tattoos and piercings, shaved undercuts and pink and blue hair.
We were the only customers but they were expecting a coachload: two long tables were set and ten members of staff were idling by the bar.
The waiter showed us to a table up on a wooden platform. A shield and claymore sword decoration loomed on the wall above us. The menus were laminated.
Haggis. That was the menu. Haggis burger, haggis stew, haggis pakora, tempura, even soup. Let me say: no one in Scotland eats haggis without a sense of irony. It’s one of the things I like about the place. Anyone eating the national dish will tell you, ‘I’m eating haggis!’ French people do the same with frogs’ legs. People claim to love haggis, or the veggie version which is a nut roast and nothing at all to do with haggis, but it’s not a staple. It’s tourist food for special occasions.