September 19, 2022 is a day that has rightfully entered into History: the entire world said goodbye, for the last time, to the most famous and popular sovereign in the world: the regina Elizabeth II. After 70 years of reign, at 96, the tireless Queen left us forever on September 8, 2022, taking with her an era full of events that have written our present, suspended between two centuries, between the empire and a new kingdom scaled down, but still politically strong. The intensity and emotion of the state funeral of this great monarch, held in Westminster Abbey, were interrupted only by a disturbing oddity: a phrase uttered off-screen during the live video of ITV News, in which many wanted to see a sort of revenge of the “specter” of Lady Diana. The explanation, however, could be much simpler.
“Death is irreversible”
Two thousand guests in the Westminster Abbeyaround twenty-eight million people connected via television or the Internet in the United Kingdom and around four billion from all over the world followed the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth, “one of the greatest television events ever”, as the BBC called it.
Everything had been meticulously prepared for decades, the famous Operation London Bridge and it went as scheduled. Apart from one small hiccup in the media coverage: as the Queen’s coffin was being carried from the Abbey to St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, as Newsweek recalled, viewers heard a raspy female voice, off-screen, saying: “The death is irreversible…The fact that she’s trapped”, Meaning what, “death is irreversible…The fact that she is trapped”. Before the voice could add anything else, it was drowned out by that of one of the commentators, this time a male one, who, as if nothing had happened, observed: “As you can see it’s a beautiful day here in London.”
Soon this very short passage, a fragment of a few seconds, went viral on the web. Who could have ever uttered such anguished words right during the funeral of the Queen Elizabeth and why? Social media users went wild with the most disparate theories. The most popular, with a hint of ghostly romanticism, even implicated the ghost of Lady Diana.
“Stuck in a circle of hell”
The princess, several X members said, would return from the afterlife for some sort of revenge, almost to remind men that even the Re they are human beings and, as such, destined to die sooner or later. Newsweek reported some of these comments. “It’s the ghost of Lady Diana who wants us to know that the Queen will never return and is stuck in a circle of hell”scrisse Jedi Werewolf. “Oh my God. It sounds like Diana’s voice. I can’t believe a reporter would say something like that.”commented William Cody. “It’s terrifying”added Phillip Byrne. “I won’t sleep tonight,” Cheryl declared.
The recurring word in most of the comments was “frightening”. To be fair, those sentences pronounced almost in a whisper, also considering the emotion of the moment, communicate a certain disturbing effect. If it had been a horror film and not the funeral of a sovereign, we would have had to compliment the screenwriters for their originality and perfect timing and the actress for having perfectly immersed herself in the role of the spectrum.
That video, however, is not a scene from a movie and it does not appear to have been manipulated. It’s just that many of us have been influenced, attributing theparanormal interpretationmore attractive, perhaps even more desired in some ways. In doing so they have lost sight of, as the principle of Occam’s razor teaches us, that among many hypotheses the simplest solution is usually the right one.
A voice from the afterlife? No, from this world
Last April the Daily Star returned to this alleged mysterypresenting the probable solution, already proposed by The National in 2022: the female voice would belong to an ITV guest. During the live broadcast of the funeral, perhaps, this woman was making some considerations believing that her microphone was off, or her words would have been intercepted by the presenters’ open microphone.
Nothing disturbing, just one of those mistakes that we hear from time to time on television. According to the Daily Star and The National ITV he did not want to comment on the incident, but there is nothing strange in this silence. There is simply nothing to say. In fact, perhaps it would be better to avoid bringing it up Lady Diana for every little thing.
The princess and Queen Elizabeth would not have always had a linear and cordial relationship. The misunderstandings between them, so different in nature, would have characterized much of the years spent by Diana at court, but of course this has nothing to do with fake spectral presences seeking revenge. The less convinced might object that the sentences pronounced would be truly ambiguous. Yet even in this case there is an explanation: the first part, “death is irreversible”is clearly audible, but not as scary as it sounds.
The guest would have commented on a fact, that is, that death is, in fact, a process “irreversible”from which there is no turning back. Why did he say such a thing? It is impossible to know, the context is almost completely missing. However, we can assume, for example, that he was talking about the long reign of Elizabeth II, praising the sense of duty of this sovereign and then regret his passing, to which we must resign ourselves. A consideration of what is inevitable.
“She is…”
The situation is quite different, however, when it comes to the second one. phrasethat is to say “the fact that she is trapped.” If we listen to the recording again, we will notice that these terms are not pronounced distinctly at all. In fact, this part is completely incomprehensible.
There is a confusion in the background which is overlaid by the presenter’s voice telling us about the climate of the Londra of that day. No one can guarantee that those exact words were spoken. These are conjectures expressed by social media users and reported by newspapers. On the other hand, what sense would a comment like that have?
The only clearer fragment is: “She is…”. Nothing else. Someone even thought that the guest did not say “trapped”, “in trappola”, but rather “travelling”, “travelling”, “on the road”, perhaps referring to the hearse headed for Windsor. This, however, remains a hypothesis.
Only one thing is certain: what we heard in the video is not the voice of a ghost(ghosts do not exist and, in any case, no one has ever managed to prove their existence), but of a real person who speaks in a low voice so as not to disturb those around her.
