The Midwife - (Episode 2 of 4) - "The Records"

0:03 Hello and welcome to Ghost. Scary stories. This is The Midwife. Episode 2, The Records. I started keeping a notebook. Not on my phone, Mrs Holloway had a way of appearing when I was looking at my screen, peering over my shoulder with that warm smile, asking what I was reading. A physical notebook felt safer, something I could hide. I wrote down everything. The inconsistencies in the birth records. The children who didn't match their parents. The mothers who left town and never came back. The adoptions that had no paperwork.

1:04 And the questions. So many questions. Why did Mrs Holloway ask so much about my career? Why did she seem so interested in whether I was ready to be a mother? Why did the other women in town look at me with something that might have been pity? Ben thought I was obsessing. Maybe I was. But the alternative was to trust a woman who made my skin crawl and I couldn't do that. Not with my daughter's life. So I kept digging. Digging. The library was my first real breakthrough.

1:43 Coldbrook's library was small. A single room in a converted house, staffed by a woman named Martha, who'd known Ben since he was in diapers. She was delighted to help the pregnant wife of little Benny Torres with her research project. Local history, I told her. I'm interested in the town's traditions.

2:04 The way the community has stayed so close-knit over the years. Oh, that's Mrs Holloway's doing, Martha said immediately. She's the heart of this town, has been for 40 years. Before her, it was her mother, and before that, her grandmother. The Holloway women have been delivering Coldbrook's babies since the town was founded. That's a long tradition. It's more than tradition.

2:32 It's a calling. Martha's eyes went soft. Mrs Holloway delivered my two boys. Best experience of my life. She has a gift. Knows exactly what each mother needs. Exactly how to bring each baby into the world. Some say she can tell things just by looking. Whether the pregnancy will be easy or hard. Whether the baby will thrive. Whether the mother will be... good? Martha's expression flickered. Just for a moment. She cares about the children... That's all. She wants every baby to have the best possible start. I let the conversation drift to other topics, town events, local businesses, the best place to get groceries. But I filed away that flicker, that moment of hesitation. Martha knew something, she

3:26 just didn't want to say it. I found the newspaper archives in a back room, stored in boxes that hadn't been opened in years. The Cold Brook Courier had been a weekly paper until 2005, when it folded due to lack of advertising. Before that, it had chronicled every birth, death, wedding and scandal in town. I started with the births.

3:52 Every announcement was the same format. Parents' names, baby's name, weight, length and a quote from Mrs Holloway about the delivery. A healthy boy, eager to meet the world. A beautiful girl with her mother's eyes. A perfect addition to our community. But scattered among the celebrations were other notices. Smaller. Easier to miss. Obituaries for infants. Baby girl Morrison, stillborn, October 1992.

4:25 James Patrick Sullivan, born sleeping, March 1989. The Thompson family mourns the loss of their newborn son, December 1994. I counted them. 40 years of newspapers. 40 years of births. 23 stillbirths. 23 babies who never took a breath. And not a single death certificate in the records to match. I checked. I went back to the basement of the town hall and I searched for every name. Morrison, Sullivan, Thompson.

5:01 None of them had death certificates. None of them had burial records. They existed only in the newspaper announcements, brief notices of grief, and then nothing. As if the babies had never existed at all. Or as if they'd been given to someone else. I found her by accident. I'd been searching for patterns in the birth records, cross-referencing names, looking for any connection between the stillborn babies and the suspiciously adopted children. It was tedious work and I was getting nowhere. Then I noticed a name I recognised. Elaine Marsh.

5:41 Listed as the mother on a birth certificate dated November 14th, 1987. One day before Ben's birthday. The baby was listed as stillborn. No name given. No death certificate attached. Elaine Marsh. The name meant nothing to me but the date did. November 14th 1987. The day before Ben was born. The day before Susan Torres, who had supposedly suffered two miscarriages, suddenly delivered a healthy baby boy. I searched for Elaine Marsh in every record I could find. The library archives. The county database. Old phone books that Martha dug out of storage.

6:27 She'd lived in Coldbrook until December 1987. Then she'd moved. Suddenly, without explanation, to a town called Riverside, 30 miles away. She was still there. I found her in the current phone directory, Elaine Marsh, 134 Oak Street, Riverside. Still alive, still reachable, still mourning a baby she'd been told was dead.

7:10 I drove to Riverside without telling Ben. He was at the school, preparing his classroom for the upcoming year. I told him I was going to the grocery store in the next town over. Colebrook's tiny market didn't have the organic produce I wanted. He believed me. Why wouldn't he? The drive took 45 minutes. I spent the whole time rehearsing what I'd say, how I'd introduce myself, how I'd ask the questions that had been burning in my mind.

7:40 In the end, none of it mattered. The moment Elaine Marsh opened her door, she looked at my pregnant belly and burst into tears. You're one of hers, she whispered. One of Mrs Holloway's mother's. I can always tell. I didn't know what to say. I just stood there, frozen, while this stranger wept on her doorstep. Come in, she finally said. Come in, and I'll tell you everything. Elaine's house was small and cluttered with the debris of a life lived alone. Stacks of books, unwashed dishes, photographs covering every surface, but not family photographs, pictures of a baby, the same baby over and over, in different poses, different outfits.

8:31 I had an artist do them, Elaine explained, following my gaze. From the one photograph I have, the only photograph I have, she handed me a faded Polaroid. A newborn baby, red-faced and wrinkled, eyes squeezed shut. The background was generic, a hospital blanket, a glimpse of institutional tile. He was beautiful, she said. Seven pounds, four ounces. I held him for maybe ten seconds before Mrs Holloway took him away. She said there was a problem. Something with his breathing. She had to work on him. Her voice caught. She steadied herself.

9:18 I waited for what felt like hours, and then she came back, and her face was so sad, so kind, and she told me he didn't make it. The cord had been wrapped around his neck. There was nothing anyone could do. Did you see him? After? She said it would be too traumatic. She said it was better to remember him alive. those few seconds when I held him.

9:42 She arranged the cremation herself. There was a small service, and then... Elaine spread her hands. Nothing. Thirty-five years of nothing. I moved away because I couldn't stand to see her face anymore. To see the babies she delivered for other women while mine was in the ground. Elaine. I pulled out my phone, showed her the photograph I'd taken of Ben's baby picture. Is this him? She stared at the screen.

10:12 The colour drained from her face. Where did you get that? It's my husband's baby picture. He was born on November 15th, 1987, the day after your son was stillborn. That's not possible. His mother, the woman who raised him, had two miscarriages before him. She was on bed rest, high-risk pregnancy. But I can't find any documentation of those miscarriages, no hospital records, no medical history, just a note in Mrs Holloway's handwriting on a birth certificate. Elaine grabbed my wrist. Her grip was painfully tight. Are you telling me my son is alive?

10:54 That she gave my baby to someone else? I don't know. I don't know anything for certain. But I think... I took a breath. I think Mrs. Holloway has been stealing babies for 40 years. Taking them from mothers she thinks are unfit and giving them to families she's chosen. Unfit. Elaine laughed, but there was no humour in it. I was 19. Unmarried. My family was furious. Mrs Holloway was the only one who didn't judge me. She said everything would be okay. She evaluated you. She decided you weren't good enough. And she gave your son to someone else.

11:33 Elaine released my wrist. She sat down heavily on the couch, staring at the photograph on my phone. His name, she said quietly. What's his name? Benjamin. Ben. He's a high school teacher. He lives in Coldbrook He... My voice broke. He's my husband, the father of my baby. We sat in silence for a long time, two women connected by a secret that had shaped both our lives. I need to meet him, Elaine finally said. I need to see my son. I know. But first I need to prove it.

12:14 I need to find evidence that will make people believe us. Because right now, I gestured at the room around us, at the photographs, at the desperate clutter of a woman who'd spent 35 years grieving a child who wasn't dead. Right now, you're just a crazy woman who never got over her stillborn baby. And I'm just an anxious pregnant wife with a conspiracy theory. So what do we do?

12:41 I keep digging. I find the records. I find other mothers. There have to be others. Women like you, whose babies died, but didn't really die. I took her hands. And when I have enough proof, we go to the police. We blow the whole thing open. Elaine nodded slowly. Be careful. Mrs Holloway has been doing this for 40 years. She has friends. She has connections. If she finds out what you're doing, I know. She won't let you take your baby and leave. She'll decide you're unfit. she'll decide your daughter belongs to someone else. The words hit me like a physical blow. My hand went to my belly, where my daughter was kicking, restless, alive. I won't let that happen, I said. But as I drove back to Coldbrook, as

13:34 the sun set and the shadows lengthened across the empty highway, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was already too late. That Mrs Holloway had already made her decision to and that my daughter was already marked for someone else. Ben was waiting when I got home.' Long grocery trip,' he said. His voice was neutral, but I could see the concern in his eyes.' Martha said she saw you in the library again this morning.' looking through the newspaper archives. Martha needs to mind her own business. She's worried about you.

14:22 Everyone's worried about you. He took my hands. Rachel, please, talk to me. What's going on? I wanted to tell him. I wanted to show him the photograph, explain about Elaine, watch his face as he realised the woman who raised him wasn't his real mother. But I couldn't, not yet. not until I had proof he couldn't deny. I'm just restless, I said. Nesting, maybe. Trying to keep my mind occupied before the baby comes. By digging through 40 years of birth records? I'm writing a local history piece, something to keep my skills sharp during maternity leave. He didn't believe me.

15:05 I could see it in his face. But he let it go. Because he loved me. Because he wanted to trust me. because the alternative was admitting that his wife might be losing her mind. Mrs Holloway is coming by tomorrow, he said. For your first official prenatal visit, she wants to do a full work-up, make sure everything's on track for the delivery. My stomach dropped. Can we postpone? I'm not feeling well. She specifically asked for tomorrow, said she wants to get to know you better, understand your needs, your concerns. He squeezed my hands. Give her a chance, Rachel.

15:48 She's not the monster you've built up in your head. I made myself smile. Of course. Tomorrow's fine. That night, I lay awake for hours, feeling the baby move inside me, thinking about Elaine Marsh sitting alone in her cluttered house with photographs of a son she'd never known, thinking about all the other mothers out there, The ones who'd been told their babies were stillborn. The ones who'd left town in grief and never come back. The ones who'd spent decades mourning children who were alive and well, being raised by other people in a town that protected its secrets.

16:29 Mrs Holloway was coming tomorrow. She was going to evaluate me, judge me, decide whether I was fit to raise my own daughter. I put my hands on my belly, felt the baby kick against my palms. I won't let her take you, I whispered. No matter what I have to do, I won't let her take you. But even as I said it, I could hear Mrs. Holloway's voice in my head. Calm. Certain.

16:58 Forty years of practice. I can always tell which mothers are ready and which ones aren't. Your anxiety. Your ambition. Your uncertainty. The Hendersons have been waiting for a baby for five years. I didn't sleep at all that night. And in the morning, when Mrs Holloway knocked on my door, I smiled and let her in. Because I wasn't ready to fight yet. I needed more evidence. I needed to find the other mothers. I needed to prove what she was before I could stop her. But time was running out.

17:36 Three weeks until my due date. Three weeks until Mrs Holloway would put her hands on my baby. three weeks to uncover 40 years of secrets in a town that didn't want them exposed. I watched her settle into my living room, her medical bag by her side, her warm smile fixed firmly in place. Now, dear, she said, let's talk about your delivery. I want to make sure everything goes perfectly. And I smiled back and answered her questions and pretended I didn't know exactly what kind of monster was sitting in my house.