The Dodleston Messages

In 1984, a schoolteacher in the English village of Dodleston borrowed a BBC Micro computer from work and took it home. Then messages began appearing on it that nobody in the house had written. Most came from a man named Tomas Harden, who claimed to live in the same cottage in the 1540s, under Henry VIII. Then a group calling itself "2109" joined the conversation. In this episode, we look at one of the strangest paranormal stories of the computer age — and test it against the historical record, from Oxford college archives to the way people really spoke in Tudor England.

🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.

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