herne the hunter

Herne

In my books i found more about "Herne" if there was 

ever a real person by that name. He was supposedly a gamekeeper

of Windsor Park, in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

The reference comes from Samuel Ireland in 1792. 

It was claimed that he hung himself on an oak in the park as he knew that 

he was about to be caught for some transgression.

This is the oak known as "Herne's oak" or alternatively

"Falstaff's Oak" after the mention in Shakespeare's 

"Merry Wives of Windsor" where the story first appears.

I recall going to Stratford to see this play, as a schoolboy,  and being

Overwhelmed as all of the cast seemed to be running around in their 

underwear in that version.

Anyway the oak itself was felled, either as a result of being half-dead, 

or being felled by a storm, in 1796, and any current oak

bearing such a title was one planted to replace them in 1906.

Jack Grimm was the one who suggested that Herne was 

involved with the Wild Hunt, a dead soul cursed forever to wander the earth

searching or hunting.

Like the Wandering Jew,

  ( which of course is the root of  the Flying Dutchman stories), 

or the American "Ghost Riders in the Sky".

the wild hunt

The wild hunt

Dogs and people have allied together for centuries to hunt.

The affinity is probably because there are similarities between dogs and people.

They can both be pack animals and gregarious, and aggressive and bullies,

The hunt is the primitive element at work in both species.

I believe that the primitive nature of the human being, 

which could never quite be got rid of, 

but which religions have been trying to control since society developed

is symbolised by the dog, and that primitive man 

Is the origin of the stories of werewolves - Or one of the origins

Herne the Hunter was an old British story, of a wild huntsman 

leading a spectral pack of dogs through the countryside.

It probably was more widespread once. 

The last one i heard of was alleged to have been seen 

In Windsor Forest Great Park

Harrison Ainsworth "Windsor Castle" illustrated by George Cruickshank.

The wild huntsman in Germanic folklore .

There was a haunted tree, Herne's oak, in Windsor Park

but which or where exactly it was....or is... is uncertain apparently.

Literary references abound. 

from Shakespeare in the Merry Wives of Windsor, to Harrison Ainsworth, 

writer of the "Lancashire Witches"

And there is a story in the classic children's tv series "Shadows" on the theme.

history

History

There's an interest in alternative history out there.

The Da Vinci Code is a case in point.

Of course there are those historians, who say pseudo-history 

has no value at all, but they're wrong.

You've probably heard it said that the pragmatic

Scientific age destroys everything, which we want to believe in;

that it stifles faith. If you want to prove that nothing odd exists,

then nothing odd does exist, but how sad that is.

There is a second kind of history, which we need.

It's an alternative history, if you like.

That type of history is called myth.

The ancient Greeks were a rational society, but they had a body of myth.

They had a mythic life.

This society wants to ruin the mythic life of our culture.

Art without history is hollow, like advertising.

Films redesigning old classic movies in the modern idiom

don't, can't improve on this classics.

Replacing classics with something shallow is not a way forward.

And the same is true with our legends. 

They are a thread of our history, which we shouldn't replace.

I'd like to draw our attention to some of these threads.

I don't want to disprove or prove the oddities of our superstitious thought,

Just prompt more thought about how interesting some of the old ideas were.

At this moment i am considering the Black Dog and the Wild Hunt for 

a story, which I'm writing.

So i'll draw your attention to Quatermass and the Pit,

Which as far as i know, is the only film to touch on this

Without perhaps being a  lame and nasty horror movie.

dartmoor legend

The Dartmoor hound

Here, for all those of you, who love the "Hound of the Baskervilles",

Is an article, which appeared in "Notes and Queries in May 1851.

The Heath Hounds

"The brutende heer  are sometimes heard near Dartmoor, and are known by the 

appellation of hell-hounds. They were heard  in the parish of St Mary Tavy several years ago, by an old man called Roger Burn; he was working in the fields, when he suddenly heard the baying of the hounds, the shouts and the horn of the huntsman, and the cracking of the whip. "

Black Shuck, a great dog, not always associated with the Wild Hunt, but

sometimes so. It's especially recorded in the wild counties. 

Norfolk is another one. The same source....

"This phantom i have heard  many persons in East Norfolk 

And even Cambridgeshire, describe as a black shaggy dog with fiery eyes, and of immense size, who visits churchyards at midnight.One witness nearly fainted away at seeing it, and on bringing his neighbours to see the place...he found a large spot

as if gunpowder had been exploded there. A lane in the parish of Overstrand 

Is called, after him, Shuck's Lane."

Borley 5

Borley

I thought i would get better photos of the flying brick

So these come from my old copy of the End of Borley

    Flying brick in the ruins.

These would be a little clearer

Borley 4

More Borley

The occupants of the Rectory built 1862

Rev Henry Dawson Bull 1862-1892

Rev Harry Foyster Bull 1892-1928 (son of above)

Rev Guy E Smith 1928-9

Rev Lionel Algernon Foyster 1929-1935

Harry Price took out a year's rental in 25 May  1937

You can see his advert for yourself in the Times index on-line

Especially if you're a local library member in the uk.

House burnt down and badly damaged 

during tenancy of Capt W Gregson in 1939

Demolished 1944

K

Borley Rectory after the fire.

It's very easy on-line now to find histories, photographs

And blogs about these events. It was possible to see a lot of the 

Borley written material on-line a while back,

 including Price's unpublished manuscript for a 3rd book.

I have copies myself of the two original books

The Most Haunted House in England, and 

The End of Borley Rectory,

where there was the famous, or else infamous picture

Of a flying brick.

Well you can see the workman in those photos, who presumably threw 

the brick caught by the camera.

This photo is of the brick.

Borley 3

Borley cont..

Have a look at foxearth.org.uk/BorleyRectory/Bullsheet

I read through this, and it looks as if Harry Bull had an interest

In ghosts, and wanted to believe that there were ghosts at Borley.

I imagine that once people start wanting ghosts to appear

then they prime themselves for it.

It's like Mrs David-Neale's tulpa

(If you don't know the story, she created an idea of the

presence of a monk accompanying her, and it became 

more and more real, and then she struggled to get rid of it.)

Ghosts are supposed to feed off our electrical energy 

in order to manifest. That's another way of putting it. 

We create our legends, we create our ghosts. 

We give them existence, and they carry on without us.

It's not unlike the way that a painter or a writer creates a painting or a story,

Except that in this case he also has to create a history,

The history of Borley, as it explains in the article,

above, is littered with stories, which purport to be histories.

Like the Borley nun and the convent, and a pair of religieuse lovers punished for

their liaison. It's nonsense as there was no nunnery there.

But stories grow.

The problem with the Borley "history" is and always was, in my mind,

the reliance on the business of ouija board readings telling us about 

individuals, who did not exist.

That's fine in fiction, but why do we take the unsubstantiated

and unsubstantiatable testimony of a medium

or the ouija board as significant at all?

Borley 2

Borley

Harry Price was really what i suppose you would call a talented amateur

Like us. He was someone, who made it his business.

Have a look at the Harrypricewebsite.

He was accused of deception, 

Once of taking a pocket filled with stones to Borley, 

when he visited, and throwing them secretly.

It's not unusual for a figure who worked himself into the public eye

As Price did to be scorned by the establishment.

A little odd when the establishment, the psychical research people

Were outre themselves.

Harry Price

Harry Price arrived at Borley and spoke to the Smiths, 

But let's go back to 1862 when the house was built.

That was by Henry Dawson Bull.

Paranormal phenomenon began then, apparently, 

But the first attested event was when his four daughters 

Saw the nun in the garden,

Borley 1

Borley

Shall i talk about Borley?

My bookshelf has a lot of content on this.

Was Harry Price a faker? Or just a product of his time?

He made a lot of this story, when it came into his hands, but 

Others were already doing that before he even arrived.

Before he came there was probably little more

Than a story of the nun, and the Reverend Foyster's wife's elaborations.

 She is supposed to have invented a lot of it to cover 

Up her liaison with a younger man, 

But surely the reverend Foyster knew what was going on..

And what an elaborate way to cover up?

Borley Rectory

This is the famous or infamous "most haunted house in England.

Of course it no longer exists. At the end of Harry Price's story about it, 

it had burnt to the ground. 

Let's begin at the beginning, with the Bulls......

Hinton Ampner 2.

Hinton Ampner

Back in July i responded to an article in the Fortean Times about 

The Hinton Ampner case

In this month's issue, I notice a follow-up in the letters column

Which matches my ideas, and it's gratifying to see someone critical of the 

History of the so-called discovered tunnels.

The author stayes that Fea's "Secret Chambers and Hiding Places"

Did not give a source for his claim, and states that it might be 

that Fea used assertions by John Duthy in "Sketches of Hampshire" (1839)

 whose source was probably hearsay.

Like i questioned, it was a haunting that went on for a long period 

and to claim that servants would perpetuate a hoax 

for that length of time, was an odd one to say the least.

I like this toing and froing of letters and observations. That was what 

would have made Notes and Queries, 

and similar Victorian magazines interesting at the time. 

That feels good, to say that the Fortean Times

 is in the true tradition of Victorian fireside magazines !

worlds beyond

Worlds Beyond

I was looking at a dvd yesterday of a British tv series

Of the second half of the 1980s called Worlds Beyond

Ghost stories in the old mould claiming to be  based on true events

Collected by a society for psychical research. 

I don't know which society, as it seems very unlikely

 that they were reported factually in any form like 

that in which they were dramatised.

The dvdset containd nine of the total of 13, which were produced.

Yesterday i found one on youtube, which wasn't in the set,

Called The Haunted Garden.

Very unlikely to be true as described,

 as a dying woman falls in love with a ghost and marries him

In front of local people, and her family, 

Which you have to admit, given the storyline is very unlikely,but it's

Interesting that this rarely scene tv series does still exist 

In some copies.

It would be nice to see some if these old films mended,

 upgraded digitally perhaps, and re-released.

Bell Witch 3

Bell Witch

This is  another where stories vary.

There's  a gap between the events and the story's publication.

In 1804, when the events happened, 

We have no topical writing. 

Ingram's book was 1894.

Stories associated with it may be apocryphal. 

That Andrew Jackson visited the site of the haunting, 

And Ingram does not even mention that or Bell's death, in his book.

Surely he would.? 

Are those two elements even later embellishments?

Is it possible that much more has been made of the story by Chinese Whispers.

Apparently the diary was never proven to exist, 

but Goodspeed's "History of the Bell Witch" Used it as a source.

For all of the movies using it as a base, is it no more than legend, 

A tale built up by word of mouth over the years, 

And other writers and  storytellers  further additions?

Bell Witch 2

Bell Witch

Of course, it was not the first time that the poltergeist

Had been associated with witchcraft, 

and in a deeply Christian community the idea of a spirit throwing things around

might very well have been connected  in the minds of 

Devil-fearing people with witchcraft.

There was a witch mentioned in the case of the Wilmington poltergeist.

 

To also have a native spirit a possibility adds another edge. 

It seldom seemed to work to pray or recite exorcism texts, or bless 

the property, because that played right into the same culture, where the 

idea of rampaging devils or witches were behind the acts. 

The spirits only become more angry, is the usual outcome,

I like original sources myself, but don't have any, 

Richard Bell's "Our Family Trouble" or Fodor's commentary onthe events.

His view that it was a "splinter of her own personality, 

formed at the onset of puberty, and developing into an independent entity, " 

Of the daughter Elizabeth, is significant.

The idea of the poltergeist agent seems to be going out of fashion

But still seems the most likely explanation to me, 

a development of unchained but unspeakable emotions running wild.

Taking an apparently independent form.

The Bell Witch

 This is a funny one.

It is described as a poltergeist case, but seems to have a malevolence 

not so much in keeping with the type.

It also lasted for a long time and recurred ten years later.

It's also not unusual for cases from America

 to be associated with native American burial grounds. 

If you watch A Haunting, you'll notice this occasionally.

The cases in America have a dual repertoire,

 the one brought by the beliefs of the settlers themselves, 

and those already innate in the culture, of the native people and their land.

Was John Bell really killed by the poltergeist, 

or was this, as in a Carnacki story,

A case of the psychic being used as a ploy 

by a real criminal to mask their activity?

To be continued.......

 

The Bell Witch Cave

Apologies for not posting for a few days. 

I am experiencing difficulties accessing the internet on my computer.

I hope to resolve this issue shortly.

In the meantime, a friend sent me this card from Whitby,

Where of course Bram Stoker's famous tale was set at the outset.

A Buffy the vampire slayer gift set.