The Plague Pits of Liverpool And The Hidden City Of The Dead...Crime Author Conrad Jones Shares His Favourite Tales Of Mystery & Horror

Step into the shadows with best selling author Conrad Jones, join him as he tells his favourite tales of mystery and horror some true and some fiction...some from the darkest recesses of his imagination! 

Conrad Jones is the bestselling author of 37 gritty thrillers that have captivated readers worldwide, with over three million downloads to date. Known for his fast-paced, emotionally charged plots and hard-hitting realism, his work spans crime, terrorism, psychological thrillers, and horror—often inspired by real-world events.

About Conrad:

Born in Tarbock Green, Knowsley Conrad has spent much of his adult life living on  the rugged coast of Trearddur Bay, Anglesey. His early career took a very different path. After leaving school, he worked as a market trader before joining McDonald’s Restaurants in 1989, where he rose through the ranks to become a Business Consultant overseeing corporate and franchised locations.

In 1993, Conrad was managing the Warrington Bridge Street branch of McDonald's when two IRA bombs exploded outside, killing two young boys and injuring many others. That harrowing experience left a deep mark, sparking a lifelong interest in the psychology of criminal behaviour and the inner workings of terrorist groups. This personal connection laid the foundation for his first series of novels, *The Soft Target Series*, following the elite Terrorist Task Force and its formidable leader, John “Tank” Tankersley—described by readers as “Reacher on steroids.”

It wasn’t until 2007, during an extended trip to the United States, that Conrad began writing. Stranded on a beach in Clearwater, Florida, after his home was burgled and his livelihood stolen, he began his first novel, *Soft Target*, with nothing but time and determination. He hasn't stopped writing since.

Conrad’s breakthrough crime novel *The Child Taker* was inspired by the global disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a case that haunted him while abroad. This novel cemented his reputation for blending gritty realism with emotionally resonant storytelling.

In 2019, Conrad celebrated the milestone of three million downloads across his catalogue. His standalone novels are interconnected, offering readers the freedom to dive into any title in his expansive universe.

A lifelong fan of the horror master James Herbert, Conrad cites *The Rats* trilogy—*The Rats*, *The Lair*, and *Domain*—as the books that first ignited his passion for storytelling. That influence comes full circle in his 36th novel, *The Nest: New York*, a chilling homage to Herbert’s legacy with a modern twist of biological horror and urban dread.

Whether writing crime, horror, or psychological thrillers, Conrad Jones continues to push the boundaries of tension and human resilience.

#ConradJones #Crimeauthor #horror #history #Liverpool 

Find his books on Amazon 

Podcast Producer Laura Raymond

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Tales from the Damps family, hosted by me, Esther Lynn Alpha and Red Jones. Tonight, the door creaks open, the lights grow dim, and you are invited into the shadows. Beyond this point like disturbing events, twisted mysteries, and tales soaked in horror. Some true, some even truer. Stories that crawl beneath your skin, whisper in the dark, and leave you questioning just how fragile your grip on reality really is. So grab yourself a brew, lock the doors and listen carefully. Because once the darkness descends, it may never leave. This is Tales from the Dark Side, and the nightmares are only just beginning. Hello and welcome to the very first Tales from the Dark Side. I'm Conrad Jones. If you've picked up one of my books over the years you might know me as the author of Gritty Crime Thrillers, Psychological Suspense, Terrorism Thrillers, and the occasional journey into the darker corners of horror. Since publishing my first novel, more than three million copies of my books have been downloaded around the world, and somehow what started as a single story has grown into forty novels and a cast of characters that readers still sell me that they can't forget. I forget them, as do so many. They just seem to blare into one. But I didn't start out as a writer. I was born in Weston Hospital and lived in Tarbook Green in Knowsley. It's a stretch of Greenbelt between Liverpool and Whitnes. I was educated at Liverpool College near Sefton Park, Liverpool City Centre, and then finished off my education in Prescott. Like many people from my background, I left school and went straight into work. I spent time as a market trader, running my own business until my twenties, before joining McDonald's in 1989 as a training manager. Then came a day that changed everything. In 1993 I was managing the McDonald's restaurant on Bridge Street in Warrington when two IRA bombs exploded outside. Two young boys lost their lives that day, many others were injured. It was a horrific event that left a lasting mark on everybody who witnessed it. For me it sparked some questions. Questions about criminal behaviour, questions about extremism, questions about what drives ordinary people to commit extraordinary acts of violence. Those questions never really left me. In fact they became the foundation of my first series of novels, the Soft Target series featuring the terrorist task force and its larger than life leader, John Tankersley. The tales from the Dark Side are going to range from different places across the country and with different characters, but the theme will always be the same. And the first story finds us in Liverpool. I hope you enjoy it. I think it's important first to set the scene and talk a little bit about the history of the area and what went on there and how that has had ramifications through the centuries to this very day. And it's all based around an area of Liverpool which anybody familiar with the city will be comfortable with talking about. So it may be about half a mile from the rocket at the end of the M62. You come to a crossroads. On the right hand side, there's a pub called the Paraffin Oil Lamp. It's not there anymore. To the left is Rathbone Road and a park. To the right is St. Oswald's Road, which leads down into the old Swan. What's so special about this area? The park on the left hand side I have very fond memories of being a child and being a keen skateboarder. And there weren't many skateboard parks around in the late 70s. Rathbone Road was one of the first. And my parents used to take myself and my younger brother, who was six years younger than me, and they would drop us off on a Sunday morning at Rathbone Road Skateboard Park, and they would come and pick us up about three o'clock in the afternoon. So we'd spend all day in the park with our skateboards, cutting your knees and scuffing your hands, and having great fun, uh, completely unsupervised and feeling very, very grown up. And that skateboard park, believe it or not, is still there to a degree. All the ramps have been taken away, but the concrete bowl is still there. The rest of the park's still there, and it's never been developed into much really but a green space. But beneath it is the history which I want to talk about. Because beneath it is one of Liverpool city's plague pits. So Liverpool as a city has been visited by plague on three occasions, the biggest one being in the 1800s, and lots of people died, lots of people were dying. And of course, the first people who get impacted when you get a disease which spreads from person to person are the people who deal with them when they're sick, or the people that deal with the bodies when they're dead. So within a short period of time, the bodies were piling up, and the city realised it had no grave diggers because they'd picked up the disease and they were dead. So they had to employ whoever was still alive and able-bodied enough to be able to troll the city with hand-push carts and find the dead bodies and bring them to the plague pits, Rathbone Road being one of them. Of course, this is a very tricky job, and you get paid by the number of bodies that you put into the pit. Some of these people that were hired, because they were the only ones still fit enough to push a cart, were unscrupulous characters. And so while they were going house to house to see if they could find dead bodies in the buildings, some of the people that they found weren't quite dead, but near enough. Near enough to put on a cart and for nobody to know any difference. And so once they tore the city and filled up the cart with as much cargo as they could carry, they would then proceed to the plague pit there and tip their bodies and get paid for each body that was put into the pit. What's that got to do with anything? Well, it it's my opinion, and in the opinion of others, the bad energy hangs around certain places. And a number of people who would have been put into that pit who quite ready to leave this life, and they were dumped in there with dead bodies surrounding them without the energy or the ability to move or cry for help. And so that part of Liverpool has an energy around it, none of it good, and it's still there to this day. Judging by the number of sightings and paranormal activity which happens in and around the city, it tends to stem and focus on that part of the city centre moving outwards. On the opposite side of the crossroads is St. Oswald's Road. Have you ever walked past a place so ordinary that you'd never suspect what lies beneath it? A church, a schoolyard, a patch of grass or a park like Rathbone Road. Most of us do it every day. But in the autumn of 1973, beside St. Oswald's Church in Old Swan, something happened there that still refuses to sit comfortably in history with little to no explanation. The parish had begun work on a new school building. Excavators had moved in, and men dug into the clay. And then they hit wood. What they'd found was a coffin. The coffin was its bricks and stones carry stories, its walls carry memory, but apparently its ground carried something else. When construction began, the parish priest of Father McCartney reportedly mentioned that there might be a few unmarked graves nearby. A few a handful. Nothing unusual for old church land, but nobody expected this. Nobody expected a hidden city of the dead. The deeper the workers dug, the stranger it became. Coffins appeared in neat rows, carefully placed, methodically stacked. Not the hurried disposal of plague victims, not the chaos of catastrophe. The arrangements suggested planning. It suggested purpose. It suggested that somebody didn't want these people to be identified. Someone had taken great care to put these people in the ground at St. Oswald's Road. And then came the rain. Witnesses later described what happened next with visible discomfort. The water softened old timbers. Some of the coffins collapsed. One reportedly revealed the body of a young woman, astonishingly preserved, after more than a century underground. There are pictures of it online. Google it, and there are pictures of the coffin and the poor young woman who spilled from the box. There aren't many pictures still in existence because they were removed. So along came the rain, and then exposure to the air began its work. The preservation vanished, and the bodies started to deteriorate before on lookers' eyes. Mud, rainwater, wood, cloth, human remains mixed together into a scene so disturbing that many workers reportedly lost their appetite entirely. Others were just so disturbed that they never returned to the site. News of the discovery reached the authorities, and that is where the Tor story takes an even stranger turn. A ten foot security fence was erected around the site. Access became restricted. The press, despite hearing rumours of a massive burial discovery, published almost nothing. No headlines, no photographs splashed across the front pages, no national discussion, no investigations, just silence. Then came the instructions. The coffins and their contents were to be removed and cremated quickly. The remains would be reburied elsewhere without names, without markers, without public ceremony. Construction halted for eighteen months, and when work finally resumed, all the dead were gone.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

Looking for your next dark obsession, best-selling thriller author Conrad Jones has gripped over three million readers worldwide with 38 brutal fast-paced thrillers across six exclusive series. From serial killers to organized crime and psychological terror, these books don't let you go. Search Conrad Jones on Amazon today, if you dare.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Entire communities had been devastated during the nineteenth century. Or perhaps it was the Irish famine, as they called it, which was typhus. Liverpool became the first destination for countless desperate refugees crossing the Irish Sea. Many arrived weakened by hunger, many never survived long after reaching England. That theory makes sense. Were those people and the victims that Typhus took put into boxes unmarked and buried? Or was there another reason? The Irish famine fits the timeline, it fits the tragedy. Yet one question remains If these were ordinary victims of famine or disease, where are the records? Victorian Britain loved records. Births, deaths, workhouses, burials. Officials documented almost everything. Yet thousands of burials appear to have vanished from the paperwork. Or perhaps the paperwork vanished from us. Twenty two years later in nineteen ninety five, local historians attempted to obtain official information. According to community accounts, they received a remarkable response. No records existed. The event itself was effectively denied. The discovery they were told had never happened. But how do you erase something witnessed by workers, by clergy, by officials, by locals? How do you erase the people at the crematoriums three thousand coffins dug up and cremated? How can you deny that that happened? There are memories, people have recounted them. There are several photographs but not many. How do we raise three thousand five hundred and sixty one coffins? And this is where history gives way to legend. Every mystery grows in its own mythology. Old Swan is no different. Some stories speak of secret societies operating beneath respectable appearances. Others whisper about forgotten relief shelters during times of famine. Places where society's poorest could disappear quietly. There are tales of organized burials conducted under the cover of darkness, of records deliberately withheld, of people considered too inconvenient to count. Most historians would dismiss such stories, there's little evidence, much speculation, and yet mysteries survive precisely because certainty does not. One local tale tells of a security guard walking the perimeter fence late one rainy evening. He noticed a figure standing among the excavated graves, motionless, watching. The guard called out, but there was no answer. The figure turned, and something about the face was wrong. Not absent, not hidden, just wrong. As though somebody had attempted to recreate a human face from memory and failed. The next morning the guard resigned, and he never returned. True? Probably not. But every place keeps stories. Urban myths. And sometimes stories grow where facts leave empty spaces. People speculate. Whatever happened beneath Saint Oswald's one truth remains. Three thousand five hundred and sixty-one people were buried there. They're not numbers, they're not statistics. They were people. They were people who laughed, people who worked, people who fell in love. They complained about the weather, they dreamed about tomorrow. People whose names are lost now. Whether they died from disease, famine, neglect, or something we still do not understand, they deserve at least one thing to be remembered. So if you ever find yourself in Old Swan, stand for a moment beside St. Oswald's. Listen to the traffic, look up at the spire, and think about the ground beneath your feet. Because history is not always written in books. Sometimes it's hidden underground, silent, patient, until Shovel finds it. And sometimes the things we forget are not gone at all. They're simply waiting for somebody to remember. Thank you for listening to the first of the Tales of the Dark Side by me, Conrad Jones.