Is Lord Francis Dashwood here?
Is Paul Whitehead here?
[chiming]
Paul Whitehead, is that you?
[chiming]
Phil!
[Josh] On this episode of Expedition X...
-[horse whinnies] -[Jessica] Whoa!
[Jessica] It looks like a place that Satan would hang out in.
[Josh] ...my team heads to the British Isles...
This is the most historic part of Dublin.
[Josh] ...to investigate the Hellfire Club,
a centuries-old secret society...
[man] Where the most elite members of the club would've engaged in Satanic worship.
[Josh] ...said to worship the Devil.
-[Jessica] Phil! -Yeah?
[Jessica] Something was throwing rocks over here.
[Phil] Where are you?
-[disembodied voice] Get out! -[Jessica shrieks]
[Sinead] The rituals, the sacrifices, murders.
[Phil] That's creepy.
-[beeping] -Is that you making the REM-POD go off?
[beeping]
[clanging]
[bleep]
[suspenseful music playing]
[theme music playing]
Okay, who has heard of the Hellfire Club?
I watched Stranger Things. I've seen the t-shirts.
Not that one. Not the D&D club. Think older.
X-Men villains, the Hellfire Club.
A cabal of evil aristocrats.
-Okay, so that is closer. -Mm!
Because those super villains were based on a true story.
The Hellfire Club was a real
Satan-worshipping secret society
that was popular in the UK and Ireland in the 18th century.
And here's the thing.
I just got a lead from Dublin
that the Hellfire Club may still be up to its evil ways.
But from beyond the grave.
[eerie music playing]
[Josh] In the early 1700s in the United Kingdom,
secret societies are everywhere.
The most famous is the Freemasons
founded in 1717.
But the most infamous is founded two years later,
the Hellfire Club.
Alongside plenty of drinking and debauchery,
the group's primary focus is blasphemy.
They make it their mission to mock religion,
even naming Satan as club president.
But the sacrilegious party does not last long.
In early spring, 1721,
the king bans any such immoral and profane clubs.
However, the dark days of Hellfire are just beginning.
The club escapes across the Irish sea,
reincorporating in Dublin,
where they take Satanism even further,
holding black masses, mock crucifixions,
dabbling in dark magic.
And in 1738,
reportedly even sacrificing a maid
in the name of the devil.
The club first congregates at Dublin's Eagle Tavern.
But when they need more secrecy to perform their sinister rituals,
they ride south,
to a remote hunting lodge atop Montpelier Hill.
The group mysteriously disappears in 1745.
But its legend only grows in the three centuries since.
The club's former haunt outside Dublin
is considered a hive of paranormal activity.
And their purported spirits might be getting more aggressive.
This electronic recording of a disembodied voice
was recently captured by historian Sinead Houlihan.
[recording plays]
[Josh] Could this once secretive site
truly be damned due to a deal with the Devil?
What do you think?
So if there were actual Satanic rituals going on
or heaven forbid, human sacrifices,
then that is very, very dangerous.
We might actually be dealing with intelligent, malevolent energies.
Listen, I've been to Ireland a lot.
And it is a magical place
but I don't mean that literally.
How much of this story's real and how much is just bravado?
Hopefully, they've embellished the whole Satan-worshipping angle.
I think the devil's in the details here.
Well put.
So the mission is, get to Dublin, meet Sinead,
and separate fact from fiction.
Raise hell with Hellfire.
-Hell yeah! -We're on it.
Good luck.
It's a six-and-a-half-hour flight from New York to Ireland's capital, Dublin.
[Irish folk music playing]
[Josh] Located on the banks of the river Liffey,
people have been making their home here for thousands of years.
[Phil] So have you been here before?
[Jessica] I've not. I've always wanted to come.
-So this where we are, right now... -Yeah?
This is called Cork Hill. This is the most historic part of Dublin.
And I've definitely had a Guinness
or four, in the bars up and down around here.
How many bars around here?
A few and I can't exactly remember.
The reason I brought you here is because
there was something very interesting
on the side of one of these buildings.
I think you're gonna want to see it.
Check it out.
-[Jessica] Oh, no way! The Eagle Tavern! -Yes! Which is?
The Hellfire Club meeting place. Okay!
So this is where they would come and do their debauchery.
[Josh] While Hellfire's first meeting place
sits prominently in the center of Dublin,
it's where the society moved to next that's most infamous.
A hunting lodge seven miles south atop Montpelier Hill.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Phil] I think we gotta go up through here.
So I figured if this is how they got to the hunting lodge
back in the 1700s,
we might as well ride in style.
[horse whinnies]
[Jessica] Imagine doing this everyday.
Like, this is your only mode of transportation.
It really gives you a sense of how far away from the city you are.
The top of this hill would be a good place to look over Dublin
but also get into some interesting business
-without being seen. -Yeah.
[enthralling instrumental music playing]
[Jessica] Look at that!
-[Phil] Hey! You're okay. You're okay. -[whinnies]
You're okay.
So this is where it all went down.
And it looks like a place that Satan would hang out in.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Phil] Wow. So there's the hunting lodge.
[neighs]
[Phil] As we finish our trek on horseback,
we meet our eyewitness, Sinead Houlihan.
-Hi! -Hi.
-Hi, I'm Phil. -Nice to meet you.
Sinead.
[Phil] Sinead is a local historian
who's been to this site several times
and has experienced some truly bizarre events.
This is quite the building.
It is. It dates back to 1725
when it was first set up as a hunting lodge by Wiliam Conolly.
He died four years after building this lodge.
There was a Hellfire Club started in 1735 by Richard Parsons.
Upper class society used to congregate here.
The rituals, the sacrifices, murders,
all the debauchery, all of the misbehavior
and a lot of evil.
[Jessica] Were Parsons and his group up here
legitimately trying to bring up Satan?
Dabbling in the dark side was popular at the time.
I think they were trying to invoke Satan or other dark entities that were here.
What kind of experiences have you had up here then?
[Sinead] I heard a woman wailing in the distance.
[woman wailing]
Went over to see what it was.
While I got there,
um, the same exact sound switched to the other side.
[woman wailing]
[Sinead] And next thing, the sound changed again.
[woman wails]
People come up here and they have had stones thrown at them
from the second floor.
[Phil] Did they just hear a stone fall?
-Or did they see-- -It was actually thrown at them.
From one room to another.
Not only that.
They have heard music and whispered voices
coming through the building as well.
And there's like layers of paranormal activity occurring here.
Like a snowball effect over the years,
it keeps building up and building up.
Especially from the EVP, where you heard "Get out."
[recording plays]
Something that's quite stern and it doesn't like anybody being here.
It's quite antagonistic.
[Jessica] I can only imagine how terrifying
the specter of this lodge must have been for the locals during its peak
as the home base of the Hellfire Club.
[Sinead] Best of luck to you.
[Jessica] Sinead definitely gave us a lot of intel to follow up on.
And as night falls, we have the entire hunting lodge to ourselves.
[Phil] Okay.
[Jessica] The lodge consists of two levels
with a main entrance that was originally on the second floor.
A third story has since been destroyed.
The first floor housed a kitchen, servants' quarters and adjacent stables.
The plan tonight is to do a paranormal sweep
of this historic Hellfire site...
[Phil] That goes all the way up.
-[Jessica] Let me see. -Check it out.
[Jessica] ...and to try and find answers
behind who or what might be haunting it.
Why do you think
there's certain spots that are... leaking water?
I think it must be the cracks up here.
After all, it's been around for a long time.
Did you hear that?
-That was me. -What'd you do?
Wait, that you mean?
-[Phil] Yeah, that. -That, that's...
-Wow. -That was my foot.
So you were there. Sounded like it came from right above me.
It's definitely bouncing up and coming down.
[softly] Weird place.
[captivating instrumental music playing]
[water drips]
[Phil whispering] So this is the floor where Sinead said
a lot of the activity happens.
[in normal voice] Check it out.
A view of Dublin right out the window here.
[Jessica] That's cool.
[clanging]
-[suspenseful music playing] -[Jessica] The [bleep]!
What was that?
Sounded like metal.
Check this out, Jess.
-[Jessica] What? What you got? -This rock.
Do you think that's what Jess fell?
[Jessica] No, that sounded like something going down the stairs.
[Phil] Yeah, but it sounded like something could have been hitting this.
[clanging]
-[Jessica] Mm... -That's-- That is the exact noise.
-What? -That high pitch, 100%.
I'm not saying it was this.
[Jessica] I don't know about that one.
[thump]
-[Jessica] What the [bleep] was that? -What the hell was that?
[intense music playing]
[Phil] Oh, look at that pigeon nest. Right here.
Okay. Well, we know this place is alive.
[intense music playing]
-Big space, you'd have a fire place. -Yeah.
[Phi] This could be exactly the space
where Parsons, almost 300 years ago,
-ran the rituals of the Hellfire Club. -Yeah.
[Jessica] So, what would you like to do?
So I'm... really curious about how sound and wind pass through this place.
'Cause obviously there's big, open windows everywhere.
But some of them are more narrow.
We've already experienced how sound is bouncing around here in some interesting ways.
So to visualize the passage of the wind through here,
I have the proof right now. A fog machine.
-You brought a fog machine? -It's not to party, Jess.
It's to visualize the wind.
So where do you want to set up your fog machine?
I think the bottom floor because then I'll get a sense of if any air
is lifting up or coming in and out of the windows down there.
Okay. And then I can do IR camera up here.
-Then I can try and do some call-and-response. -Okay.
[enthralling instrumental music playing]
[Jessica] After our walk-through,
Phil heads back downstairs to prep the fog machine.
[Phil] So my fog machine will help me visualize
the movement of the wind in here.
This is an anemometer.
I'm gonna set up several of them around.
And that will actually measure the velocity of the wind
going through these little passages.
To see if we get any peaks that are strong enough
to knock over something like a stone.
Make it seem like a stone's been thrown at somebody.
[Jessica] Okay.
I stay on the second floor
and position an IR camera on one side of the floor
and a REM-POD on the other.
[chiming]
I want to try to make contact with any of the intelligent entities
believed to be here through a call-and-response session.
Accounts of the club's gatherings claim that members
frequently drank scailtin...
Okay.
...a mixture of Irish whiskey and hot butter
with a dash of brimstone,
more commonly known as sulfur.
Cheers.
So I pour a glass as a trigger object
to connect with any restless souls
or Satanic imprints that might be with us.
[softly] Oh, my! [inhales] Ooh!
So right now...
So right now it's really clear that the wind
is blowing towards me in this direction.
I can't even get any fog in this room.
So it's interesting to see where it actually flows to from here.
Oh. There we go.
[Jessica] If you're here,
I've poured a glass in the other room.
Feel free to help yourself.
There's a device that I placed in the center of the room.
It's glowing red.
If you step near it, it will go off.
Is there anyone in this room with me?
It is ripping through here.
And then it just stops.
So we get these gusts right now.
There, it's going, it's going, it's going, it's going, it's going.
Look at that. Look at that speed.
[softly] That is wild.
[captivating music playing]
[in normal voice] And... relatively still over here.
And then it's just flying out this window.
But it comes and goes.
Which tells me that
the air that passes through here
is, is really volatile.
Were you a member of the Hellfire Club?
[beeping]
There we go!
Did you conduct rituals here?
[beeping]
Is that you making the REM-POD go off?
[beeping]
-[clanging] -[bleep]
[suspenseful music playing]
Something was throwing rocks in here.
Phil? Phil!
-Yeah? -Come upstairs! I heard something.
-Where are you? -[suspenseful music playing]
[instrumental music playing]
-[Phil] Where are you? -Right over here.
Sounded like something was throwing rocks in here.
But you know, there's a lot of rocks over there.
Do you have any idea which they were?
[Jessica] I have no idea.
[intense music playing]
[Phil] You're sure it sounded like it came from here?
Absolutely, 100%, no doubt in my mind it came from here.
So if there were some of these rocks up there,
-maybe the wind got strong enough. -The wind's not strong enough!
The wind is coming in gusts.
But you would be able to feel that in here
if it was that strong to push rocks?
How was the fog experiment downstairs?
It's all over the place.
I mean, there is no area where it just settled and sat there.
It was constantly shifting from one room to another.
There were some rooms I couldn't blow fog into for a while
-'cause the wind was so strong. -Mm-hmm.
And then 10 seconds later, the wind would take it all in.
[softly] So I definitely think that
wind in just the, the strange openings in here, like the one up there and here,
plays a role in what people seem to hear in here.
And maybe even what's being tossed around, like your pebbles.
[Jessica] Is there an entity in here with us?
Are you messing with us right now?
Go ahead and throw some stones.
[whispers] The wind just picked up.
Last chance.
[Phil] I don't think it's here.
[Jessica] Phil thinks nothing is in here with us.
But I definitely had a palpable experience with the REM-POD.
Something appeared to interact with me intelligently through it.
But I had a lot of audio to review before I knew for sure.
[pleasant music playing]
[seagulls squawking]
[Jessica] The next morning, we head back to Dublin
to meet with a Hellfire historian...
-[Phil] Hey, David. -[Jessica] Hi!
[Jessica] ...to learn more about the club's Satanic secrets.
When we're thinking about the Hellfire Club
and why they did what they did,
we have to think about the time we're talking about.
The Enlightenment is happening.
A lot of people said,
"I'm a free thinker. I don't believe in
the Biblical version of events.
There's a rational basis for existence,
not a Biblical or religious one."
The Hellfire Club took it one step further and they said,
"We are going to actually do devil worship."
[eerie music playing]
So whether the Hellfire Club members believed it or not,
they were still doing a lot of rituals
to try to bring out the devil.
They certainly were.
What happened with the end of the Hellfire Club
and where did everybody end up?
Members either died or were driven into exile
between roughly 1738 and the early 1740s.
One of these people who left, Sir Francis Dashwood,
he's known to have gone to England, in West Wycombe, near London.
It seems at that time, he convened a group of men
who were involved in quite provocative activity.
-[indistinct chanting] -[suspenseful music playing]
Strictly from a sexual perspective, but also very mocking
of established religion.
-Offering up prayers to the Devil. -[suspenseful music playing]
Drinking to the Devil's health.
A sustained train of horrific blasphemy.
Okay, interesting.
-Well, it sounds to me like we have to head to England. -Yeah.
-All right, well, thank you very much. -Good luck.
-All right, thank you. -You're very welcome.
[intense music playing]
[Phil] If there was a darker and more disturbing Hellfire Club
over in England, as David claims,
we need to reconnect with Josh about this new piece of intel.
-Hey, Josh! -Hey, Josh!
Top of the morning, guys. Your Irish eyes seem to be smiling.
-Oh. Well, that's kind of you. -Yeah.
I got a little buzzed last night when I made this alcoholic offering.
But it was a productive investigation overall.
Listen, Josh, she did it for the mission.
[Jessica] I did, I did.
Sure, you did. Yeah.
So how's it going out there?
It sounds as if the Hellfire Club
were probably doing Satanic rituals,
I feel like there's definitely
some activity out there that I cannot totally explain.
-Okay. -Get this, Josh.
When the Hellfire Club here kind of died down,
there was another one that started up in England
that was even more sinister.
[Josh] Yes, I know about this place.
They had these infamous caves there
that were used, supposedly, for Hellfire rituals.
Phil and I feel like the next step would be
to head over to that Hellfire Club
and start exploring that space as well.
No objection here. Sounds like a good plan.
Why don't you hop the next flight to London
and check out the Hellfire caves?
Sounds good. Thanks, Josh.
All right, cheerio!
[Josh] It's a 90-minute flight from Dublin to London.
[band music playing]
And another half-hour drive out to West Wycombe,
the site of Dashwood's Hellfire Club
that dates back to 1751.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Josh] On top of West Wycombe Hill
sits the majestic Dashwood mausoleum
where I've arranged for Phil and Jess to meet with eyewitness Ash Darkwood.
[Ash] How you doing?
[Josh] He's a local historian and expert
on all things Hellfire on this side of the Irish sea.
What can you tell us about where we're standing right now?
It was not until 1894
that the activities here were referred to as a Hellfire Club.
The members here referred to themselves
as the Knights of Saint Francis.
Saint Francis being Sir Francis Dashwood.
[Jessica] Why did they get the moniker Hellfire?
[Ash] Sir Francis Dashwood owned all this land.
-[Jessica] Mm-hmm. -[Ash] And so he could
do with it pretty much whatever he wanted.
-[Jessica] Mm-hmm. -And he did.
[Ash] For the most part, it was political meetings.
These were the people he ruled.
-Benjamin Franklin was an honorary member. -[Jessica] Interesting.
The final cavern, known as the Inner Temple of the caves,
that's where the most elite members of the club would meet.
Sir Francis Dashwood, Paul Whitehead and maybe just a couple of others
engaged in occult practices, black magic, Satanic worship.
What are some of the rumors of ghosts and Whitehead being seen here.
When Paul Whitehead died, his body was buried in London
-but in his will, he left his heart... -[Jessica] Mm-hmm.
...to Sir Francis Dashwood.
And requested it to be buried here in the mausoleum.
And it was actually based up there.
In the Victorian period,
an Australian soldier actually stole the heart.
And since then, people began to see
the apparition of Whitehead inside the cave network.
[Phil] Huh.
[Ash] Legend says that he's in search of his heart
and that's why he returned.
[Phil whispers] This is insane.
And when the caves were refurbished, there's this famous story
of a young child becoming lost from her mother and becoming
-completely disorientated, started crying. -[girl crying]
And she was rescued by a man who brought her back to the entrance of the caves.
[girl crying]
When the adults looked around, the man was gone.
But the child described
a man who was believed to be Whitehead.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Phil in normal voice] Have you had any personal experiences here?
I have, yes.
-Really? -Um, there was one occasion
I was just entering into the main banquet hall.
And I heard my name whispered into my ear.
[indistinct whisper]
Almost like a stage whisper.
It was a whisper but it was quite loud,
-if you understand what I mean. -[Jessica] Yeah.
[Ash] So I was quite confused as to who that was.
There was another occasion when I had a stone actually hit my glasses.
[Phil] Was there anyone else with you?
Not at that time, no.
Huh. That connects to some of the reports at the Dublin Hellfire Club.
[Ash] My personal belief is that Whitehead's heart
by being taken, just triggered
um, that paranormal response.
You're a bit of a believer here.
Yes, absolutely.
-[Jessica] Well, thank you so much. -[Ash] Very nice to meet you.
-[Jessica] Nice to meet you, too. -[Phil] Thank you, Ash.
[Phil] Directly underneath all this stone and flint
that make up the Dashwood mausoleum
sit the infamous Hellfire caves.
Where the Satanic rituals of Sir Francis Dashwood took place.
[suspenseful music playing]
[enthralling instrumental music playing]
[Jessica] Check that out.
[Phil whispers] Weird place.
[Jessica] Cave's right down there.
[Phil in normal voice] That's creepy.
[enthralling instrumental music playing]
[Phil] The Hellfire caves run a quarter of a mile under West Wycombe Hill.
Large, secluded alcoves connect a long labyrinth
of chalky corridors.
-Is that what I think it is? -Oh, yeah, it is.
-That an urn? -That's an urn.
Whoa.
[creaking]
It almost looks like there's ash inside there.
Can't tell if that's just debris from the lid.
I mean, it is broken, so that couldn't just be dust.
[Jessica] Potentially in the presence of human remains,
I start my digital recorder for a call-and-response session.
Whose urn is this?
Paul Whitehead, is this where your heart was stored?
-I say we just keep on walking. -Okay.
-Yeah, I'm just gonna have it run. -Okay.
[Jessica] Oh, look at that face!
Oh, my gosh!
[Phil] Wow.
[Jessica] Who carved these faces on the wall?
Ooh. Figure this just in a loop.
So researching the cave, this is where you would check in.
Men would go left. Women would go right. Meet on the other side.
And that's who your sexual partner is for the rest of the night.
Whoa. Well...
-Gonna go left? -I'll go left.
[Jessica] I'll go right.
[suspenseful music playing]
-[Jessica] Hello? Is that you-- -Hey, wow.
[Phil] You voice carried weird in here.
-[Jessica] Really? -Yeah.
Let me go back, let's do that again.
-[Phil] Yeah, talking right there. -Talk right here?
Move a little bit forward.
Moving forward.
La-la-la-la-la.
Hello?
Is there anybody else here in with us?
[low rumble]
-Did you hear that low rumble? -[whispers] Yeah, I did.
[in normal voice] If there's anyone else here with us,
can you please make that sound again?
[bats screeching]
[Jessica] The bats just came buzz me.
-[Phil whispering] Oh, my gosh. -[bats screeching]
-[Jessica] But that's not what made that rumble. -Oh, no.
I definitely feel like something's watching us.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Jessica] This is the banquet hall.
[Phil whispering indistinctly] Okay.
[Jessica] Oh, wow!
[Phil in normal voice] Look at the size of this place.
[Jessica] It's massive.
Think of all the things that happened in this room, Jess.
-Oh! -Some pf them I don't wanna think about.
[Jessica] Whoa, we got Venus over there.
[indistinct whisper]
-What'd you say? -I didn't say anything.
-You-- Seriously? -Seriously.
What'd you hear?
I don't know, I just-- I thought I heard somebody just whisper.
It sounded like "Hello."
[suspenseful music playing]
-[Phil whispering hoarsely] Hello? -Yeah, like that.
-[in normal voice] That's how close you think you heard it? -Yeah, maybe even more closer.
I don't know, it's weird.
This is the exact spot that Ash said he heard his voice.
Dashwood, are you here with us?
Was that you whispering hello to us?
I definitely heard "Hello."
[Phil] The Hellfire banquet hall is reportedly
the largest man-made chalk cavern in the world.
And with its vaulted ceiling,
the acoustics can really play tricks on you.
[Jessica] Why don't I set up a REM-POD?
[Phil] Jess says she definitely heard a voice in here.
So she sets up some REM-PODs for a call-and response session.
-[beeping] -[Jessica] Okay.
[Jessica] Are you here for any of the Hellfire Club activities?
[beeping]
[Jessica] Do you see anything down the hallway?
[Phil] Nothing over there.
[indistinct noise]
-[Jessica] Okay, at least we're getting some hits. -Yeah?
That's promising.
Is Lord Dashwood here?
-"Yes." -"Yes."
Is there any other Hellfire members here?
"Me."
Who's "me"?
What's your name?
[beeping]
"Ash."
Ash... yeah!
"Phil"? Oh, my God, he said Phil!
Sounded like he said "Phil."
[indistinct noise continues]
[Jessica] Who else is down here?
[beeping]
[softly] Oh, wow, that is going off again.
[in normal voice] These are the best hits we've had all night.
My name, Ash's name,
I mean the chances of those names coming out,
that's a little weird.
[Jessica] And all in the same spot.
The same room.
Whoa. So what does that tell you?
I guess it tells me, like, this place could be haunted.
[Phil] The banquet hall is one of the most sacred spots in Dashwood's Hellfire caves...
[Jessica] All right, we're moving along if you'd like to come with us.
[Phil] ...second only to the inner temple
which lies at the very end of the meandering cave route.
Ooh... [chuckling] yeah!
-[Phil] Wow. -[Jessica exclaims]
So, Aphrodite, huh?
I was thinking I'd stay here by myself, sit in the dark,
see if anybody crosses the threshold.
And if I can see or feel anything.
Okay.
Or if it's just, like, my mind playing tricks on me.
So a bit of sensory deprivation in the deepest part of the cave?
-Exactly. -Okay.
Well, I'm still really curious about the banquet hall.
-Okay. -Where Ash heard his name.
You just heard someone whisper in your ear.
And I wanna see if I can track down some bats
'cause I think there's quite a few flying around in here.
-[Jessica] All right. -Yeah.
I would say radio me but I don't think the radio signal's
gonna go through these walls. So--
No, I think we'll just have to trek back and forth
-and just check on each other. -Okay.
-Sounds good? -Good luck in the dark.
Thank you.
[Jessica] While Phil heads off to explore possible natural causes
to the strange sounds and voices heard in these caves,
I stay back to reach out to any of the reported spirits in here
through a new type of call-and-response box.
[chiming]
Okay.
Lights.
All right, so there's a theory that older ghosts are more comfortable reaching out
through mechanical devices rather than digital ones.
It lights up and plays a music box
anytime something passes in front of it.
All right, lights out.
[intense music playing]
Is there anyone in the room with us?
[Phil] Odd acoustics might explain
some of the strange noises heard around here.
But another natural source could also be the bats that call these caves home.
So after my LIDAR scan,
I do a walk-through with the ultrasonic bat detector that I have on my phone.
It records echo-location signals from bats
which it compares to a catalog of known species in the area
to help us identify who or what is flying around here.
[bat wings flapping]
Ooh, we got a hit.
-[bats screeching] -A big bat hit.
Check that out. Leisler's Noctule.
I actually have never heard of that bat before.
There's, I think, 19 species that can be found here in England.
And we got one of them in here.
So I'm definitely gonna do some more digging on at least the size of them,
noises that they make
that could maybe explain a little bit
what people say they experienced around here.
Is Lord Francis Dashwood here?
Is Paul Whitehead here?
-[chiming] -Oh [bleep]!
Paul Whitehead, is that you?
Hello?
[chiming]
[yelling] Phil!
Well, the first rule of the Hellfire Club was
"Don't talk about the Hellfire Club."
But over its years of devilish deeds,
the outrageous exploits of some members spilled into public view.
The founder of Dublin's Hellfire Club was the Earl of Rosse,
notorious for playing so-called practical jokes on men of faith,
infamously inviting a senior priest to his house,
only to greet him completely naked, as you do.
Another Hellfire member was James Worsdale.
While visiting the Irish town of Mallow,
Worsdale reportedly got too familiar with his landlady's daughter,
causing the angry mother
-to beat him with a chunk of mutton. -[Worsdale screaming]
Mutton chop indeed.
And most macabre of all is the story of club member Lord Santry
who drenched his servant in brandy,
tossed a match on him and burned him alive.
Thank goodness these men of Hellfire are all consigned to history.
[dramatic music playing]
So I was in the room.
Totally quiet, totally dark.
I had that motion detector up.
I'm like, "Who's here in the room?" "Is there anybody in the room with me?"
"Is it Whitehead?" [imitates chiming]
-What? -Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-Come with me. Yeah. -Okay.
Right here. I was sitting on that bench.
[Phil] Well...
I have a question for you.
Have you ever heard of the Leisler's Noctule?
-Leisler's Noctule? -Yeah.
That's the species name of a bat
I ID'd flying around here.
So I gotta wonder. What if there's a bat flying in and out of this part
-that set this off at the right time? -[sighs wearily]
-'Cause this is a motion detector, right? -Yeah, it is.
You gotta wait till the light's on. Now try it.
[chiming]
Yeah, that's a motion detector, not EMF.
Okay. So, I didn't detect
any bats on this side of the cave.
Only closer to the entrance.
-That doesn't mean there aren't any bats around here. -Oh, really?
-Especially with this-- -Wish this netting and stuff?
[Phil] I bet they would love to live up there.
[exclaiming]
But why would a bat set off the motion detector
right when I was going through the names?
Maybe they finally felt comfortable in here.
Because they didn't see lights going around.
And so they said, "You know what?
The coast is clear-ish." Take a fly around.
-It's a theory. -Crap. Yeah... okay.
I mean, I still think it's a little weird
that it went off right when I said Whitehead's name.
It is weird.
I still have the recorder running. If I hear anything on there,
if that matches up to what was going on over here,
-then I say possibly paranormal. -Okay.
But then if that comes up flat, then, okay, yeah, maybe it's a bat.
-[Phil] Maybe it's a bat. -Maybe it's a bat.
[dramatic music playing]
[Josh] For 300 years, the sordid and Satanic Hellfire Club
has been shrouded in mystery.
[Phil] That's creepy.
[Josh] My team set out to investigate the paranormal claims
behind this secret society.
[chiming]
In addition to the inexplicable disturbing sounds...
[Jessica] Oh, [bleep]!
[Josh] ...and voices heard in real time during my team's investigations.
-What'd you say? -[Josh] Jess conducted
further analysis of more than 30 hours of their audio recordings
from Ireland and England.
She discovered a disturbing EVP from inside the haunting lodge.
Did you conduct rituals here?
[Josh] And another one from inside the Hellfire cave's inner temple.
A review of the IR camera footage from this same room
-yielded no rogue bat sightings... -[bats screeching]
...casting doubt on Phil's theory.
Maybe they finally felt comfortable in here because
they didn't see lights going around.
[Josh] Meanwhile, we have no rational explanation
for what triggered the sensor.
[chiming]
[Jessica] Paul Whitehead, is that you?
[Josh] But Jess' favorite suspect remains the spirit of Paul Whitehead,
still looking for his lost heart.
Many have claimed that the hallowed halls of Hellfire
are home to supernatural and Satanic spirits.
The unsettling events Phil and Jess experienced,
both in the hunting lodge and the Hellfire caves,
do seem to suggest a darkness that defies explanation.
One that certainly could be devilish.
For more information on Expedition X,
head to discovery.com/ExpeditionX.