As a 14-year-old first ‘getting into’ ghosts, after the poltergeist which had bothered me had long ago faded safely back into the ether, I picked up a copy of a little book called Discovering Ghosts by Leon Metcalfe, which turned out to be a cracking collection of spooky snippets.

The outré headline of one story immediately leapt out at me: ‘The Leper in the Bird Cage’. Only on turning to page 28 did I discover that the Bird Cage was the name of an inn. We shall pass discreetly over the ghastly image the headline had first conjured up to my gruesome boy’s imagination (alas, not much has changed) and continue instead to what is in fact a fascinating ghost story.

Metcalfe first of all informs his readers that the inn is one of the oldest buildings in Thame, Oxfordshire, and that its odd name may have been suggested by its having once been the village ‘lock-up’. Way back in the 13^th century, however, it was an ecclesiastical building where lepers were cared for. It is believed one of these poor souls may have been responsible for the repeated knockings heard on the wall of an upstairs room.

An exorcism was carried out and the leper’s spirit apparently contacted: it was very unhappy at having been disturbed and those taking part learnt that its knocking was no plea for help but merely a malevolent attempt to frighten people away so that it would be left alone. Shortly afterwards, during renovation work, the so-called ‘knocking wall’ was stripped of its facing and a cavity discovered which ‘exuded an unaccountably pungent odour’.

© Richard Holland 2009. This article is an extract from ‘Haunted Hostelries’ which appeared in Paranormal Magazine issue 34. Visit to www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk to learn more about the publication.

Sergeant Melbury, of The Admiralty Police at the G/E Depot at Dinton, has two dogs.  He is often on night duty.  When he is on night duty, at exactly 3.30am every morning the two dogs rush to the main gate growling and with the hair on their backs bristling.  The gate and fence are lit by arc lamps.  The sergeant always investigates but never finds any cause for the dogs’ alarm

There was once a Benedictine ‘cell’ in Dinton, probably between the church and the present Phillips House.

Old Mrs M. A. Burton lived most of her life at The Kennels, a cottage on the south side of Dinton Park. For many years she worked as a maidservant for the Wyndhams at Phillips House, then called Dinton House.  She died in the winter of 1959 at the age of 92. She several times affirmed that she had often heard singing coming from a place, which she described as ‘between the church and Dinton House’.

Mrs Burton was present at the burial of Mr Engleheart outside the private chapel at Little Clarendon, Dinton.  When she heard the priest chanting the funeral mass, she turned round and said to a mourner standing by, ‘That is the music I heard within the park.’
I believe Col Chettle cut a trench between Phillips (Dinton) House from the church and found some foundations and a holy water stoop (now in Little Clarendon private chapel).

I shall never forget the early morning of 18th October, 1916. I was in bed in Watling Street, Gillingham, Kent. I woke up in the middle of a very vivid dream in which I saw my brother, Vivian, in bed in a large hospital ward.

His bed was third from the end on the right hand side.  I knew he had been wounded, that he was conscious and wanted to send a message to me, but was unable to do so, because he was wounded in the throat. In my dream I was informed that the hospital was in Leicester. This dream happened at 5 am I looked at my watch when I woke up.

This dream worried me very much for many days, and I hesitated to write to my parents to ask if Vivian was safe. He had gone back from leave only two weeks [previously]. To my great surprise my mother wrote to me soon afterwards to say that he had been killed on October the 18^th. Some time afterwards Sergeant Valentine, who was with him when he was killed, wrote to say that he died at 5 am from a wound in the throat.

Text and photo © Robert Snow

By RICHARD HOLLAND

‘If tragedies are a cause of hauntings, the Thames should assuredly be haunted, for no river in Great Britain has witnessed more murders and suicides.’

So writes Elliott O’Donnell in his Haunted Waters of 1957. O’Donnell claimed to have met several down-and-outs sleeping rough near the Thames embankments in London who had felt ‘a ghostly presence urging them to end their miserable existence by jumping into the river’.

O’Donnell mentions that the ghosts of suicides could be encountered on both Old Westminster and Waterloo Bridges. Waterloo Bridge was also haunted by the headless figure of a sailor, which may have been connected with the gruesome discovery below the bridge of a carpet bag containing the dismembered remains of a human body in 1857. After the body of another murdered man was found near Carron Wharf in Whitechapel, ‘cries and groans’ were heard in the river nearby and witnesses saw ‘the figure of a man of huge stature rise from the water, wave his arms in the air and disappear’.

By far the weirdest spook O’Donnell refers to haunting the stretch of the Thames that flows through London is that glimpsed near Cleopatra’s Needle. He describes a ‘tall, nude, shadowy figure, with a peak-shaped head and a body covered with what looked like scales’. This monstrous apparition would appear near the ancient obelisk and then leap into the river, from which ‘unearthly groans and mocking hellish laughter’ would be heard.

In the north of England, in the vicinity of Thirsk in Yorkshire, there was a haunted stream, whose ghost had earned it the name of ‘White-lass-beck’. Like many old-fashioned spooks, this one appeared as a lady in white but also in a number of other guises. W Hylton Dyer Longstaffe, in his History of Darlington (1854) writes that the ‘White-lass’ often appeared as ‘a white dog, and an ugly animal which comes rattling into the town with a tremendous clitter-my-clatter, and is there styled a barguest. Occasionally, too, she turns into a genuine lady of flesh and blood, tumbling over a stile.’

In Worcestershire, the River Teme is the final destination of a ghost’s mad chase across the countryside between Bransford and Brocamin. The spirit of an Elizabethan nobleman with an evil reputation, ‘Old Coles’, rides in a coach pulled by four spectral horses with fire spouting from their nostrils. The ghostly coach hurtles through the dark, leaping right over the great barn at Leigh Court, before plunging into the Teme.

The Cumbrian lake of Thirlmere (now a reservoir) is the scene of our final plunge into ghost-lore’s dark depths. A bizarre scene like something out of a Gothic novel is played out here, according to Harriet Martineau in her Complete Guide to the English Lakes (1855). She says a ghastly wedding feast takes place at venerable Armborth Hall, standing on Thirlmere’s shore, on the anniversary of a bride’s doomed nuptials. One tradition has it that Hallowe’en was the date chosen for the wedding but no explanation has been offered as to why the bride’s body was found beside the lake - drowned or, as some say, strangled. Had the groom done away with her, having had second thoughts, or was she killed by a former lover, who could not bear to see her married to another. Whatever the origin of the tragedy, this is what Martineau says occurs on its anniversary:

‘Lights are seen there at night; and the bells ring; and just as the bells all set off ringing, a large dog is seen swimming across the lake. The plates and dishes clatter; and the table is spread by unseen hands. That is the preparation for the ghostly wedding feast of a murdered bride, who comes up from her watery bed in the lake her terrible nuptials.’

Back from the depths, indeed.

© Richard Holland, 2009. Please visit www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk for more articles, news reports and correspondents’ personal experiences of the supernatural. You can purchase Paranormal Magazine 32, which contains the full article, from http://www.jazzpublishing.co.uk/index.php?app=gbu0&ns=catshow&ref=paranormal_backissues. Postage is free within the UK.

Yesterday Mr W. E. V. Young told me that a few years ago a woman wrote to the local North Wilts newspaper that she had heard a sound behind her when driving her car from Beckhampton towards Silbury Hill.  She looked in her driving mirror, and saw a stage coach.

Thinking that a cinematograph film was being made, she slowed down and allowed the coach to overtake her.  She noticed the jangling of the horse’s harness, the dust thrown up by the horses’ feet, the sweat on the horses, and the boot boy blowing his horn. 

She followed the coach for some way, but it suddenly vanished at the top of the slope near Silbury.  Afterwards several people wrote to the paper saying that they had heard the coach pass along the road at various times.  One woman, living in a cottage on a disused green road, stated that the coach had passed her cottage.

During the First World War Bertrand Sainsbury, a schoolmaster in the forces, cycled one Sunday afternoon to have tea with Mr Bert Young of Ebbesbourne Wake, Wilts, whom he had met at his training college.  When he arrived at Mr Young’s house, he remarked that Ebbesbourne Wake had a strange custom if they always held their funerals at 4 pm on Sunday afternoons.  Bert Young replied that funerals were not permitted on Sunday afternoons, and furthermore he was certain that no funerals had been arranged in the village for that day nor any other day in the near future. 

Mr Sainsbury then stated that he had met a funeral procession at Jarvis Coombe Corner, halfway between Prescombe Farm and the fork in the road to Ebbesbourne Village.  The road being narrow, he had to dismount from his bicycle, climbed into the bank, had taken off his hat, and proceeded on his way after the cortege had passed.  Next day Bert Young visited his uncle James Young and aunt, who lived next door, and related the story.  They repeated the story to me.

Walter Coombs, who married the daughter of Mr Bull of Teffont, is the son of old “Cadger Coombs”, who lived for many years at Sutton Row.  Cadger was a simple uneducated labourer, but rather a mystic.  He had gipsy blood in him. 

In the early 1930s his son Walter was passing the church at Teffont Evias one evening when he saw a small funeral procession carrying a coffin “over the churchyard gate”.  He was frightened and ran away.

© Robert Snow

So many authentic narratives have been given concerning the Welch lights, that none but the sceptical or incredulous can call their existence in question. These are candles or torches, which are sometimes seen over the house of the sick, and are always sure prognostics of death. They have likewise been seen on other extraordinary occasions, as well appear from the following account, the truth of which is known to many in the north of Wales, where this remarkable event came to pass.

A farmer happening to be overtaken by a violent storm of hail and rain, near the hut of a poor labourer, who lived not far from Rhytwin in North Wales, stopped at it, in order to take shelter. The storm continuing, the labourer offered the farmer a bed, which the latter, being very much fatigued, gladly accepted. No sooner was the farmer fast asleep, but the labourer, who conjectured that he must have a considerable sum of money about him, murdered his guest, and taking the money, which amounted to twenty pounds, buried the body on a rising ground behind the hut; and early the next morning went off to Bristol.

The hut was soon after taken by another labourer, who late in the evening after observed a light, which settled constantly on the same spot on the eminence; sometimes there appeared two together, which after blazing a considerable time, suddenly disappeared, and left him filled with terror and consternation. He apprehended that this appearance signified that he was soon to die, and in the anxiety of mind, he imparted what he had seen to three of his acquaintances at Rhytwin, and begged that they would go with him to his hut that evening, that their own eyes might convince them of the truth of what he told them, as they seemed backwards to give credit to an account so extraordinary.

They accordingly went with him to the hut, and after waiting some time, saw, with astonishment, a light settle over the rising ground, and in about ten minutes disappear. They were greatly puzzled to guess at the meaning of this; when at last one of them recollected, that the night before Morgan (that was the name of the murderer) left the country, he happened to pass his hut, and saw a traveller enter.

This circumstance made him form a suspicion that a murder had been committed; he therefore advised to dig up the rising ground, at the place over which the light had appeared. This was accordingly done, and the body being quickly found, put murder out of all manner of doubt. Those who had found the body deposed all they knew concerning it before a magistrate at Rhytwin. The coroner sat upon it, and brought in his verdict, ‘Wilful Murder.’

As Morgan had been seen at Bristol by some of the inhabitants of Rhytwin, after he left Wales, two constables were dispatched to that city in quest of him. Being taken, he was brought back to Rhytwin, and tried at the ensuing assizes, where there appeared such strong circumstances that he was condemned to die. He however persisted in making the strongest asseverations of his innocence, and kneeling down in open court, prayed to God that his legs might rot off if he was guilty of the murder.

Between the time of his sentence and execution, they in fact rotted off a little below the knees. The hand of God was so visible in this judgement, that the criminal confessed his guilt, and was executed, pursuant to his sentence. This extraordinary event, which happened in the year 1627, may be depended upon as authentic.

The series of ‘Tales from the Terrific Register’ edited by Cate Ludlow are published in hardback by the History Press, rrp £9.99.

Avenury lodge is probably only 100 years old.  Mr W. E. V. Young, the archaeologist and curator of Avebury Museum, lives there with his aged mother.  They live in the top flat.  The ground floor is a flat for one of the Avebury custodians and his wife.

Both Mr Young and the woman in the downstairs flat have often heard loud tappings on the landing floor (I have tested these boards and find that it is not easy to make these relatively modern floorboards creak).  Recently Mr Young, when working in the kitchen, ran into his mother’s room on hearing loud tappings, while the woman downstairs, hearing the same noise, ran upstairs in alarm.

Mrs Young is over 90 years of age and so feeble that she cannot walk or stand alone, and has difficulty in raising her hands to her mouth.  In her bedroom she sleeps in a small bed in the N. W. corner, while her son sleeps in a small bed in the opposite S. E. corner, about 15 feet away.  Mr Young has recently placed an upright dining room chair, close to his mother’s bed and parallel to the head of the bed to prevent his mother from rolling out of bed.  From long habit, Mr Young wakes several times during the night to see if his mother is alright. 

A few nights ago he awoke as usual, and on looking across the room saw to his horror that his mother was lying on the chair.  She was either unconscious or asleep.  From her position, she looked as if she had been dragged out of bed, for it would have taken a very active person to get her into this precise position. 

Added to this strange incident was the startling fact that Mrs Young’s underclothes, which had been lying folded up on her bed, were now 15 feet away on her son’s bed.  It would have been absolutely impossible for Mrs Young to move two feet, let alone 15 feet. 

Mr Young lifted his mother back to bed, poured some brandy between her lips, and she soon returned to her normal dazed position.  At no time has Mrs Young any recollection of getting into the above position.

Written down by Dr Clay on October 18, 1960. © Robert snow 2009

This happened one moonlight evening at 7 pm when Mr.  W. E. V. Young, the curator of Avebury Museum, was standing outside the museum after locking up for the night.  The museum lies at the western end of a wide trackway bordering the northern wall of the churchyard.  He saw at the north-east corner of the chancel a figure with its head concealed by a covering similar to a Macintosh.  Mr Young thought it was young Bob Clements, a local youth who was a constant nuisance, and who, Young thought, had a short while ago attempted to break into the museum. 

Mr Young entered the gate at the north-west corner of the churchyard, near which he was standing in the hope of finding out whether the figure was that of Clements or not.  The figure at once moved along the side of the north aisle before Mr Young could intercept him.  Mr Young hurried forward and gained on the figure as it passed round the west side of the church.  Mr Young put out his hand to catch hold of it, but as he did so it suddenly vanished.  He never saw its face, for the figure had its head covered by a sort of monk’s cowl.  He searched a nearby yew tree and the whole of the churchyard, but never found the figure again.

A few days later when Mr  Young was again searching the churchyard in the evening, he saw Miss Cox, the village schoolmistress, working in her garden, which borders the churchyard wall about 20 yards due east of the east end of the church. 

Miss Cox at once said: ‘Have you seen anything strange about here lately?’

Then she told him that a few evenings ago, when she was working in her garden, she looked up and saw a strange figure close to the east end of the church.  She realized that ‘it was not human’ and at once dropped her garden-fork and ran indoors in a panic.  For some days afterwards she had been afraid to go into the garden in the evening.

Some months before this, the estate carpenter (Mr Rendle) was walking along the path which leads from a gate in the west wall of the churchyard to Truslowe Manor.  He passed on the little bridge ‘a woman in white’.  Her appearance was so strange and so unlike anything he had ever seen before that he had hesitated from mentioning the episode to anyone for fear of ridicule.

When the original Saxon Church was enlarged in the late Norman times, some of the vallum and some of the stones of Avebury Circle had to be levelled.  A portion of this levelled ground was acquired as an extension to the churchyard in 1922.  Whenever a grave was dug in the churchyard Mr  Young was in the habit of searching the excavated soil for relics connected with the prehistoric circle.  About 1957 when a grave was being dug in this new portion of the churchyard, the extended skeleton of a young woman with very much abraided lower canine teeth and many shards of late Norman pottery was found.  The skeleton was lying east and west and it appeared to represent a Christian burial of Norman times, buried probably just inside the bounds of the Norman churchyard.  There were no signs of a coffin.   Perhaps the ghost was that of this young woman.  The ghost was evidently covered in a shroud. 

Mr Young first told me of this ghost when I visited him on 28th August 1958.  He and I went over the ground very carefully and I made detailed plans of the churchyard and the exact spots where the ghost was seen by Mr Young, Miss Cox and the estate carpenter.

© Robert Snow / Photo of Avebury Church at dawn © Richard Holland

By Richard Holland

In a recent edition of Paranormal Magazine, Janet Bord kindly wrote for me an article on Haunted Battlefields. Not long ago acquired a little booklet published by the Edinburgh Psychic College in 1949. Two years previously, a member, Mrs E  N Shove, of Nairn, received information about ghostly aromas at, of all places, the bleak and melancholy Culloden Moor. Her report is a particularly interesting example of this kind of haunting, and I reproduce it below:

‘Last year, I was given a copy of a letter, no name to whom written, and no name from whom (though in the most surprising way I have learned both) in which the writer was trying to find out something about the scents of Culloden. The writer says: “I had better explain a little. Ten years ago, my sister and I were staying in Inverness, and went to Culloden Moor. Our mother was a Calder, and her family were out in the risings of ‘15 and ‘45. Culloden Moor is the saddest place I have ever seen. I could almost hear the weeping and wailing that must have taken place there, and going to every cairn said a De Profundus at each one.

‘Presently, I caught the scent of roses or sweet peas or other flowers, but there was nothing to account for the scent, no flowers anywhere. Next I could smell incense, and last of all a smell of burning wood. In spite of looking everywhere, and in every direction, there was no sign of anything whatsoever to account for the scents. I was puzzled. Next day, I crossed to Skye, and not long afterwards I picked up a very old magazine, left lying about by another guest. In turning the leaves I was petrified with amazement to read an article entitled “The Scents of Culloden Moor”. The writer mentions the scent of flowers, of burning pastilles (incense).

‘I have one thing to add to this. I went to the memorial service in April 16 this year and had I experienced any sensation of sense that day, I should not have been at all surprised, as I was very worked up. It is a most moving ceremony. But I felt nothing. Sometime in May, I rode out taking ten small children, all on bikes, to visit the battlefield. After I’d shoo’ed them off, I stopped behind to look round to see they’d left no mess, and no one had lingered, heaved a sigh of relief at having done this when I was bathed in a wave of most glorious scent — the hot sweet scent of a garden in full bloom. For a moment, I didn’t think, but I looked around in surprise to see from whence it came, as it was early in the season.

‘Suddenly I realised I was in the middle of the moor and no garden near, and I also realised that utterly unexpectedly I had experienced the “Scents”. I had, unfortunately, no time to linger and see if they were followed up by any of the other scents. And though I have been back once or twice, that is the only time in which I experienced it. I have been trying to find out if there is any legend concerning this. I have ancestors buried there. I belong to the Church of Scotland. But I am of Highland descent, and I’m considered very psychic, as I have dreams of dreams and seen visions.’

© Richard Holland, 2009