Welcome to Unexplained Extra, with me Richard McLean Smith.

Where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories that for one reason or

other didn't make it into the show.

In last week's episode, pre-sense, young couple Lisa and Andy Weirich were haunted

by the prospect that their daughter had been cursed with the ability to see people who

had long since died.

This story was used as the basis for a 2013 film titled rather paradoxically, The Haunting

and Connecticut 2, Ghosts of Georgia.

Where in real life, no specific reason was ever given for the apparitions that were apparently

witnessed at the Weirich property.

The film took a decidedly different tact.

Rather than a random selection of previous local residents, the spirits were taken to

be former slaves who had tried to escape the region only to be murdered by the man who

had promised to help them.

The story draws heavily on the history of the underground railroad, a network of secret

routes and safe houses, established in the late 18th century to help slaves escape the south

and seek a better life in the free states of the north, as well as in Mexico and Canada.

This incredible organisation, led by free-born African-Americans, as well as former slaves

such as Harriet Tubman and other abolitionists, such as Levi Coffin, is credited with helping

over 100,000 individuals gain their freedom.

The underground railroad was so called, partly as a reference to the secrecy of the organisation,

but also because its secrecy was maintained by the use of code words, such as conductors,

...