The Curse of Daniel Morgan, Part Two
To this day, these incidents remain barely reported. There was a flurry of news coverage in the British media during the time, but curiously almost no-one in the media picked up on the alleged occult connections, or even the rumours regarding a possible relationship between Agosto and Winfield.
What is known for certain is that following an ill-fated second week of filming and facing the inevitable abandonment of filming, Winfield did not show up to the final day on set, and it was the early evening when Agosto found him hanged in the cottage where she had been staying. Several days later, on Christmas Eve, Agosto herself was killed in a collision on the M25. She had been returning to London, and was found with several boxes of research material on Daniel Morgan that had been collected by Harry Grant and passed on to Winfield.
The story that later emerged indicated that the two had been having an affair. Both were married, things had likely gone sour, no doubt exarcebating an already stressful production. As a result Winfield took his own life, and though the coroner found no intoxicants during post-mortem it was generally accepted that Agosto’s accident had probably occurred while she was under the influence.
The timeline of events preceding their deaths is unclear for several reasons. Many of the crew were never interviewed during the short inquiry that followed, several refusing point blank to talk to investigators. It remains a mystery why this was never pursued up by anyone in authority. Much footage had been rendered unretrievable. Mirroring the earlier accidental destruction of White Ship Films’ negatives, most of the tape used degraded during transport back to the company’s offices in London. Quality control may have been an issue for one set of tape, but the documentary segments of the shoot had been recorded on a different type and different brand. It seemed an odd coincidence that both would types degrade within the same narrow time frame.
From the few written accounts available, it’s clear that the incidents on the set increased in severity over the final week. The predicted bad weather caused most of the delays, and contributed to the damage that continued to happen to the crew’s equipment. During the daylight hours no apparitions were reported, but items would go missing and more than one person reported hearing strange banging noises coming from the empty buildings they worked around.
Towards the end of the week, a replacement generator had to be brought in after an engineer was injured by the equipment they had been using. The injury he received was never specified. The new item arrived in time for the last session of night shooting.
The final night was the worst for the production. Many of the crew who were present that night did not return the next day, contributing to the delay in discovery of Winfield’s body. No records remains of the exact events, but several strange things were seen, and much audible phenomena was recorded. Needless to say, everything captured on tape was lost when the storage media degraded.
To date, no-one has attempted to adapt any of Daniel Morgan’s work. The rights are still available, though both White Ship and Conrad Media are no longer ongoing concerns. Most of the crew involved in both attempts at filming have since left the industry, and the ones who remain are clear in their belief that another attempt should not be made. They are not alone in believing that Morgan’s work is cursed.
