In 1874, a ten-year-old girl was rescued from horrific abuse in New York City—not under child protection laws, but under animal cruelty laws.

Because children had no legal rights.

This episode tells the true story of Mary Ellen Wilson, a child whose suffering forced America to confront an unthinkable truth: horses and dogs were protected by law, but children were not.

Behind closed doors during the Gilded Age, Mary Ellen was beaten, starved, isolated, and treated as property. When a missionary named Etta Angell Wheeler tried to help her, she discovered there were no laws, no agencies, and no systems designed to protect abused children.

So she did something radical.

She asked the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for help.

What followed was a landmark court case, the birth of the world’s first child protection organization, and the beginning of modern child welfare as we know it.

This is not just a story about one child.
It’s the story of how visibility became protection—and how recent, fragile, and necessary those protections still are.

Because child protection is not ancient.
It’s barely 150 years old.

And it started with one child brave enough to speak, and one woman unwilling to look away.

There are Christmas stories you read by the fire…
and then there are the ones whispered through cold hallways, drifting like dust from a place that remembers more than it reveals.

Welcome to Christmas in Ward C — a standalone Whispering Walls special that pulls you into the forgotten children’s wing of Greer Asylum. This episode isn’t cheerful. It isn’t festive. It isn’t even particularly jolly. It’s the kind of Christmas tale you tell with the lights low, the wind tapping at the window, and the uneasy feeling that someone else might be listening too.

For decades, Ward C was sealed—its doors locked, its records shredded, and its remaining belongings shoved into storage like the building wanted to forget it ever existed. But fragments still surfaced: a nurse’s photograph tucked behind a medicine cabinet… a doll stitched with mismatched thread… a patient ledger missing half its pages… a rocking horse with burn marks down one side. And every December, staff claimed the same thing: the faint sound of children singing, even though the ward had been empty for years.

In this special, the Whispering Walls hosts take you through the unarchived Christmas tragedies of Ward C:
• the nurse who decorated a tree with medical gowns
• the children who vanished during the winter blackout
• the doll that kept appearing in new places, even when the room was sealed
• the photograph of a ghostly figure watching through the frost
• and the final Christmas Eve before the ward was shut down for good

You’ll hear the artifacts. The testimonies. The things that remained behind when everyone else was gone. You’ll hear the moments no one recorded but everyone felt. We trace the history of the children’s wing, the failures of early psychiatric care, and the shadows that still cling to the edges of the asylum’s past.

This is not a reenactment.
It’s not fiction.
It’s the chilling mixture of history, rumor, and the impossible — the intersection where the Greer Asylum always lived.

The hosts bring their signature balance of grounded thoughtfulness, dry humor, and steady presence as they guide you through the eerie beauty of a Christmas that refused to be forgotten. Expect haunting moments, unnerving details, and the quiet kind of grief that lingers long after the tree lights fade.

If you’ve ever wondered what becomes of the memories a building tries to bury… or what Christmas looks like in a place that never knew warmth… this is the story you’ve been waiting for.

Turn the lights down.
Pour something warm.
And step with us into Ward C — where the walls remember, the dolls wait, and the snow drifts through a window that should have stayed shut forever.

Hey Rock fans! Welcome back to Whispers from the Walls.
You know, we’ve been mixing things up a little lately… and tonight, we’re stepping into the story of the woman who quietly built one of the biggest rock families of all time.

Most people know AC/DC.
They know Angus — the wild schoolboy in the shorts.
They know Malcolm — the rhythmic backbone of hard rock.
But almost nobody knows the woman who raised them.

Her name was Margaret Young, and she lived a life as bold and determined as the music her sons would someday unleash on the world.

Margaret was born in Glasgow in 1914, raised in a working-class neighborhood where survival depended on grit. She married William Young, had eight children, and faced the harsh reality of post-war Scotland: fading jobs, rising poverty, and no real path forward for a big family.

Then she heard about the Ten Pound Poms — a government program offering British families the chance to immigrate to Australia for just £10. It was advertised like paradise, but for most, it meant starting over with nothing but hope and determination.

Margaret didn’t hesitate.
She packed up her children — including young Malcolm and Angus — and boarded a ship across the world in 1963. The trip was long, crowded, and uncomfortable, but she never wavered. She believed a better life was waiting on the other side.

When the Young family landed in Sydney, they had almost nothing. Margaret took whatever work she could find: cleaning houses, laundry, odd jobs that paid just enough to feed eight kids. The home was noisy, cramped, and chaotic — but it was filled with love, stubbornness, and music.

And Margaret encouraged every second of it.

Her older son George found early success with The Easy beats, proving to his younger brothers that music could be a real path. Soon Malcolm and Angus were practicing day and night, hammering out riffs in the tiny family home while Margaret kept everyone fed and in line.

And yes — she’s the one who bought Angus that now-iconic schoolboy uniform. She patched it, washed it, and made sure he had it for every early gig long before it became rock legend.

Margaret didn’t tell her boys to “be realistic.”
She didn’t complain about the noise.
She didn’t try to shrink their dreams to fit their circumstances.
She believed in them — fiercely, quietly, and without hesitation.

As AC/DC exploded into one of the loudest and most electrifying forces in rock history, Margaret remained their anchor. She was tough when they struggled, proud when they succeeded, and steady when fame threatened to shake the ground beneath them.

Behind the guitar solos, the amps, the chaos, and the global success… stood a mother who crossed an ocean to give her children a chance.

Tonight, we shine a light on Margaret Young —
the immigrant mother with the iron will,
the woman who survived poverty and upheaval,
and the quiet force who raised two of the greatest rock musicians of all time.

Without her, there would be no AC/DC.
No thunder.
No legacy.
No band that shook the world.

This is her story.