Footsteps heard in empty rooms are commonly reported during hauntings – but here are some more unusual examples of this phenomenon.
By Richard Holland
Recently I acquired a copy of Phantom Footsteps by Alasdair Alpin MacGregor in its attractive dust jacket by the artist Biro. It’s not entirely given over to tales of ghostly footsteps but since Janet Bord is currently putting together an article for my Paranormal Magazine on such phenomena, it seemed time to revisit the subject.
Footsteps heard in empty rooms is a comparatively common phenomenon in haunting cases but both Macgregor and Bord offer some examples that are out of the ordinary. MacGregor tells the story of Angus Munro, who lived in Navisdale, Sutherlandshire. When he was a boy of 12, Munro’s psychic uncle, ‘Sandy the Seer’, came to stay. After a hard day’s work on the croft, they both crashed out in the old-fashioned bed-closet. In the small hours of the morning, the Seer nudged Munro in the ribs to waken him and asked him if he heard anything:
‘The lad also heard distinctly heavy footsteps passing to and fro on the tthatched roof of the cottage. Suddenly the steps ceased; and both uncle and nephew now heard as distinctly the sneck of the closet door being lifted and lowered gently, once, twice, thrice. They sat up in bed, expecting someone to enter. But no one did. Everything resumed its former stillness.’
The same thing happened the next night: ‘Again heavy footsteps were heard on the thatch overhead. Out they rushed, the uncle going round the cottage in one direction, the nephew in the opposite direction. Not a thing stirred. Nor did anyone nor anything descend from the low roof. They re-entered the kitchen, much shaken. Scarcely were they seated before the sneck of the kitchen door began to move up and down. Angus hastened to the door and listened. Not a sound could be heard. No retreating footsteps were audible on the wide borders of the shingle and pebbles about the cottage.’
In her Footprints in Stone, Janet Bord tells of this eerie incident: ‘In 1855 at Ipplepen in Devon, a trail of footprints, apparently a woman’s shoe with heel- and sole-prints clearly visible, was seen in the thick snow on the thatched roof of Penrae, a former farmouse. The occupant Mrs Hall did not go round the house to see if the prints continued there, because it was snowing heavily, but her dogs behaved as if frightened by something for a couple of hours, after which time they were suddenly normal again.’
This unusual account is further compounded by a mysterious event that took place 100 years previously. ‘In the mid-18th century,’ writes Janet, ‘a man called John Turner died in a heavy snowstorm near Rainow in East Cheshire. The mystery arose from the discovery of a single woman’s shoe-print in the snow by his side, which no one has ever been able to explain.’
Who is this invisible woman, wandering the countryside in less-than-sensible footwear during snow-storms? I guess we’ll never know, but she is the creator of an intriguing and little-known phenomenon.
Janet Bord’s article on phantom footprints and handprints will be appearing in Paranormal Magazine issue 36, issued at the end of April.
[SOURCE: Phantom Footsteps by A A Macgregor (1959); Footprints in Stone by Janet Bord 2004.]
