question

QUestion.....

WHy should i carry on doing this?

I'm going to take a holiday to figure out whether
 i want to bother to continue with this for so lirttle interest.
IT seems so utterly pointless. Nobody ever comments
 or bothers to make contact with me.

riverside london 3

Eland road 2

 The poltergeist continued to overturn heavy furniture, 

and break objects , including several window panes, 

and drop or throw objects like coal, stones, and

potatoes, as the days went by. Harry Price and the reporter 

found evidence of the damage, and had near misses,

 as when a gas lighter, weighing a couple of ounces 

apparently landed on the floor behind their backs.

A little while later young Fred, was taken to hospital

for examination, as it was believed that he was responsible.

Despite his absence, the poltergeist's behaviour remained.

Mrs Perkins said that whilst she tried to prepare dinner, 

chairs began to line up and march down the hall.

This particular trick has become somewhat famous in 

poltergeist literature.

It even got a cartoon to itself in an issue of Punch.

A policeman was called in and he didn't believe her, 

but  once he was gone an attache case flew across the room, 

 an umbrella jumped from its stand, and the table fell over.....

riverside london 2

Eland Road

In Poltenrgeist over London Harry Price devoted a chapter 

 to Eland Road. Lavender Hill...the Robinson House.

This is the one, where the property backed onto a mental

health institution, so ... of course... they got blamed for the

 stone throwing. The house was a typical suburban house

 of a working class family, two floors and gardens back and front.

 Its occupants were the elderly Henry, 86, Frederick(27) 

and his three daughters, Lillah, Kate and the widowed 

Mrs George Perkins, and her son Peter.

This house was to come to be dubbed "the mystery house"

bY the press. It appears to have come to Harry's attention

 at Christmas 1927. He visited in January, at the same time 

as a "garrulous female journalist"

The house had been reduced to mayhem by the poltergeist

already, Windows and furniture was smashed, and ornaments broken.

They had lived there 25 years without incident. Then on November 29th

in true Fortean style, lumps of coal, pieces of soda, 

and pennies began to fall on the conservatory behind the house.

Red hot cinders formed in a pile in the outhouse.

When the old man's bedroom window was smashed they decided

to move him out

Even as they did, a heavy chest of drawers crashed to the floor

of the bedroom......

....to be continued.....

putney and battersea 1

Putney heath

Abershaw the highwayman was tracked down 

 after several highway robberies to his favourite haunt, 

 The Green Man pub in Putney, and,

in a desperate attempt to escape, he shot at the two 

 officers, and one was killed.and the other seriously injured.

When he was caught he was tried for murder and on 

3rd August 1795, he was taken to Kennington to be executed.

But some say that he was gibbetted on Jerry's Hill

On Putney Heath, and that is where he is said to haunt. 

The story goes that his gang retrieved the body,

 as it mysteriously disappeared.

  He's said to trail people who wander the Heath at night.

Apparently his body is interred in a highway man's cemetery up there.

"And still of a winter’s night, they say,
when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon
tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight
over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding…
up to the old inn-door."
​Extract from The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)

I do like tales about ghosts of highwaymen... maybe it's the involvement of gibbets.

I wanted to go on to talk about the Eland Rd haunting...

Next....

riverside London 1

Beside the Thames.....

 

 I've been out of things for a few days. 

Anyway, i'm up in London today, 

at the London wetlands, in Barnes.

I once lived in Shepherd's Bush.

I also had a time in Hounslow, and worked in Richmond Surrey,

and worked just up the road from Wandsworth Bridge station.

So, in preparation for the sitting down to watch

 the London Marathon, which i believe is tomorrow.. 

I thought i'd return to where my heart really resides.

SO .... let's look at ghosts here about, shall we?

There's a poltergeist case...

I recently bought a copy of a story told by a participant called

"The Poltergeist Prince". Wycliffe Rd,

The Eland Rd ghost investigated by Harry Price.

Highwaymen on Putney Heath.

I love this part of the Thameside.

My ancestors were involved in collecting dark age artefacts

from the river, and this collection now is housed

In the Museum of London.

Honestly.....

That then is of which i speak next week on these pages....

A short distance beyond ponds on Putney heath

is a forgotten burial ground, where several of the highwaymen, 

who terrorised the area, were buried.......

tomb ghosts

Barrows etc

I  have an idea that shadow people are somehow 

connected to the demon phenomenon.

It's about how our minds leave a trail behind them, 

when negative emotion takes shape...

Or having spiritual phenomenon feeding on the shadows

of our course through life, perhaps. 

Evil times breed evil beings.

I sometimes wonder in my own darkest moments, if life isn't a sick joke, 

and some spiritual parasite doesn't feed off our suffering.

But then our darkness, our depression, our anger and hatred

could be said to be the parasite.

Do we leave our negative emotions behind us in some form 

when we die? Is that something like what ghosts are, actually?

There are tales about dark shadows running around or standing like 

  gravestones in cemeteries, and at least one of the early series of

"A Haunted" tells of ghost hunters in a cemetery, where a boy 

is possessed by a demon. (There were some good ones, very well

produced, in the first 4 series, but it's dropped in quality since.)

The idea of shadow-people-like presences mimicking

 gravestones  in cemeteries ties in, I think, to the dark

presences, of ancient English lore, connected to barrows.

 What i mean is that the spectral beings, which we reportedly

see today, were seen historically as well. 

The human mind works in the same way now, as it did then.

Does the old debate, whether consciousness survives 

really relate to whether dark emotions survive in some way?

The protective angel which returns from sleep,

like King Arthur, to save the English people,

being one side, the other being the dark emotional side 

protecting the burial from bejng disturbed.

the earth hall

 The earth hall

 Inside a barrow, there is a cavern, or a great hall, 

in which sleeps a knight until he is needed to protect his people, 

or else a dragon, curled up and waiting to arise and terrorise

 the community, or the spirits of the dead, which return

 like vampires to inflict revenge on the living.

Obviously if it is a tomb, then it would stand to reason that 

something incredibly precious is hidden there.

The tale of Grendel and Beowulf's battle with the spirit, and its mother,

 of course is in line with these stories. 

Exactly what kind of spirit the Grendels were is hard to define,

 and they are often interpreted as being dragons, 

but they seem bloodthirsty.

Iron Age hill forts are often shaped with dragon-like rings 

or embankments surrounding them, which may have something 

to do with why serpentine  monstrous worms are supposed to live there.

Such serpents are alleged to have driven away treasure seekers,

for instance, at Cissbury Ring.

There is alleged to be a tunnel leading from Offington Hall (demolished in 1960s)

to Cissbury,  and in the nineteenth century, 

 a blocked tunnel entrance was found behind pannelling in its library,

and explorers trying to open the tunnel,(about 2 miles)

were chased away by ghostly serpents.

As serpents are  tunnel dweller, of course, 

The manorial hall joining to the earthly hall, 

The corporeal power to the spiritual in the community.

 

barrows

Barrows

Of course, barrows are mysterious places.

Eerie by their very nature, as the tors and hillforts are.

 There is one other thing which adds to the mix.

Burial. Naturally the interred dead in such places are 

buried with ancient artefacts, and hence treasure.

Wherever you have treasure, you have treasure hunters,

whether there is any treasure there or not.

 Try to convince a treasure hunter that it isn't there!

 The fact is that hidden treasure and the occult

 or hidden lore are inextricably linked.

 There will always be an association between treasure and magic.

 Between the supposed wealth of the dead and the supernatural.

 Both are discussing the possibility of hidden secrets.

 Naturally you will bury your wealthy dead, and their "source of power"

 with a defender... something to protect it from tomb raiders...

A curse, or a being, which represents the curse made manifest.

 Where there is the possibility of treasure 

there must be treasure, and secrets to be discovered,

 and tasks to be performed to reach that treasure.

This series of interconnected motifs run all of the way back

to myth, such as the tale of the minotaur, 

like Orpheus travelling to Hades  to recover his lost love. 

 To the mysteries of Ephesus.  Rituals have been performed

for centuries in magical initiations, depicting mystic journeys.

The shaman took narcotics to travel to the land of the spirits, 

 and gain his precognition of events and occult knowledge.

There is a whole history of human being's association with 

the dead, and the buried treasure, material or magical, which they guard.

Whatever it is, Dan Brown, it's still the holy grail!

None of this explanation of the origin of a tale in any way 

Negates its reality. it isn't a sceptic's dismissal. I believe

  that it strengthens the story.

I'll look at barrow legends more in this light....

wights

WIghts

SEe, it's still doing it! Webmasters never answer your problems....

I am looking into "wights." What are "wights" you ask?

They only appear in one place in literature that i can find,

legendary beings from Norse or Celtic literature.

The place i've seen them is in that segment of

The Fellowship of the Ring dropped out of the 

mega film version of the Lord of the Rings. 

It happens early on, when Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry

meet Tom Bombadil. They ride off into the mist with the 

mysterious tale of the barrow wights in their heads.

 We aren't really told the body of this tale, and fog descends,

 the travellers get separated, and each one of the hobbits is taken prisoner

  and brought near to death by a shadowy form, which isn't 

really described, but Frodo kills with a nearby sword blade.

The word "wight"is middle saxon, really

There is an original  anglo saxon  word 'wiht,'

 which means "a being, something, anything"

I Suspect that this got mixed up with an old norse word 'vigr'

which meant "warlike," which entered saxon as 'wight', as well,

which the dictionaries say had the

meaning "swift, nimble, courageous and strong"

Hence you get a hostile, powerful being of a spiritual nature,

And this came to be a 'spiritual entity'

The creature is a creature of the dead and darkness, and 

probably in some way connected to all of those legends,

like the one telling how King Arthur and the knights 

of the Round Table would emerge from their hill to save

England when its people were in mortal peril.

Obviously there must be something, which will emerge from a hill

as well, to create  mortal peril.

In the Lord of the Rings, the suggestion seems to be that the hobbits

 were nearly drowned.......? And rescued by Tom Bombadil.

It's really vague and a peculiar episode, and 

I can't say that I'm surprised that the film

 makers chose not to include it.

One of my missions is to keep alive tales of spiritual 

beings, which are too good to lose.

And ghosts of the long barrows are so important to English mythology.

highdown hill

HIghdown Hill

THe google peopl still aren't answering my enquiry.

I Am up Highdown Hill Worthing this morning. 

Got a cake and coffee in cafe and a seat.

 It's usually a free for all.

Taking videos and photos. This is a haunted place,

 at least atmospheric. Remember the Miller's tomb?

I Posted about it some time ago.

This hill like most hill forts has an eerie atmosphere, 

espcially first thing in the morning.

It is the sense of history here.

I'll post some of my spooky videos on fbook

the wild hunt

THe wild hunt

I Still haven't had any response to my request from google to  

sort this double capital problem out. 

Anyway, whilst I'm waiting, I'll have a look at the story of

the wild hunt, I think. I had a discussion with a friend about 

Herne the hunter, and she thought he was mythic,

but I was sure that there was a royal keeper of

Royal Parks, who was called Herne, and this related to the

 much older wild hunt stories.

Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles is a possible result

 of the tale of a pack of Dartmoor Wisht hounds, 

led by a dark huntsman, who run on the trail of

 the Dead or damned. 

Here is an account from a version of the

 Anglo Saxon Chronicles:

"Several persons saw and heard many huntsmen hunting. 

The hunters were swarthy and huge, and ugly; 

and their hounds were all black, and wide-eyed and ugly.

And they rode on black horses, and black he-goats.

This was seen in the very deer-park in the town of Peterborough, 

and in all the woods from that same town as far as Stamford.

 And the monks heard their horns blowing in the night. 

Credible men, who saw them in the night, said that

 there might well be about twenty or thirty horn-blowers."

technical issue

I had a few days off to prepare a letter, submission, etc,

 for sending to a literary agent, with a hope

 that I might get a novel published

I am having trouble with this blog as well.
It insists on typing the first two letters of every new line
WIth two capitals, (like this,) and i can't find how to stop it.
THis is very irritating, and I need to sort this out.
IT slows down composing these pireces
ANd is very irritating.

I have requested assistance from the team... besr with me.

the desire of spirits

THe desire of spirits

I Recently came across a wikipedia entry
 for a creature called a dhampir.
The idea is that a vampire would continue to desire
  sexual relations with its former wife or lover after they had died.
I have always been interested in the stories
of demons, like the succubus and incubus,
which are said to visit a man or a woman respectively,
during the night.
They are said to have become very attached to their adopted
lover... those of you x-files fans might remember the x-files
episode, where DS Skinner is visited by an elderly female  spirit,
which looked after his welfare, and he picked up in Vietnam.
The Dhampir is a Balkans vampire  child, born of a union
 between a vampire and a human woman,
A very fragile being, which is supposed to be unclean
( that is dirty and , slimy
even, ) and without nails or bones.

The vampire's sexuality isn't just the creation of Bram Stoker.
The same is said of revenants all around the world,
And a returning spirit in African cultures needs to
be kept out of the village, because it might come back to
claim its connubial rights. A concept, which
has been continued into vudu.

Myth is full of tales of the liaison between spirits and human
 women. The whole mythology oof the Fallen Angel,
for instance, as a horde of lusting angels were thrown
 out of heaven for desiring to fraternise with human women.

ghost photos

Ghost photos

You can believe tyem or not...
The top two are quite famous.
I thought i'd collect some together;
Greenwich, Rainham.
Not sure of the source of the third.

night terrors

NIght terrors

I  remember having woken up one night to hearing 

the tap tap tap of a wooden leg outside of the airing

 cupboard on the other side of my bedroom door.

I suppose that it must have been a fixture of the machinery

  of the boiler in there, but that's looking back 

with the hindsight of adulthood.

In fact, i never saw "pegleg" but i was afraid one night

 i might run into him going to the bathroom.

I Recently discovered that Buddha, otherwise known

 as Constantine or Neo, had a similar experience:

Keanu Reeves, that is......

He says that ' I was living in New Jersey, when i saw 

and felt this ghost. I remember just staring at this suit

 which had no body or legs in it as it came into the

 room before disappearing. It was a doubke-breasted suit in white,

 and i looked at my nanny, who was just as shocked as me.

 I just couldn't get back to sleep afterwards,

 and i still see the figure in my dreams and nightmares."

...........Theme tune for the Twilight Zone........

Bexhil

Bexhill

You know, the De Le Warr pavilion, where Poirot cornered the 

kIller in Suchet's version of the ABC murders...

There's a spooky story here...

A student visited Bexhill Museum and tells a story

of being approached by a tour guide, who gave her 

an informative and thorough tour with lots of local 

information... when it was over, she shook his hand

 and thanked him very much, but when she approached

 the door, she met an official,who told her that

 he was the only one working that afternoon.

Whoever he was they ought to have employed him.

Looking up Bexhill i also came across this... the ghost of a suicide.

 I could, i think, only direct you to this web  page,

A Forum, where the story unfolds... i like that.

.

http://www.discoverbexhill.com/messageboard/thread.php?tid=2541

Apparently a man hung himself in a garden at Watermill Lane, 

in the 1920sand consequently haunts there

vampires 4

Croglin Grange

This is an interesting tale, but Harper himself questioned it.

He said that Croglin Grange didn't exist, as far as he could find.

There was a Croglin High Hall and a Croglin Low Hall, according to Harper 

It reads like a story, rather than an account of an "actual" happening. 

I haven't come across it anywhere else, but.....

THis is what the wikipedia entry says about it: 

The Vampire of Croglin Grange is a vampire legend that took place in Cumberland, England. The story first appeared in Story of My Life by Augustus Hare, written in the 1890s. In 1929, Montague Summers republished the story along with the first chapter of Varney the Vampire. He pointed out that the two stories were very similar and should be dismissed as folklore.

It also says that

A version of the story appears under the title "The Window" 

in Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell's 

More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1984).

Still, it is a good dark story, isn't it?

vampires 3

Croglin continued...

"As it bit her, her voice was released, and she screamed with all her
might and main. Her brothers rushed out of their rooms, but the door was
locked on the inside. A moment was lost while they got a poker and broke
it open. Then the creature had already escaped through the window, and
the sister, bleeding violently from a wound in the throat, was lying
unconscious over the side of the bed. One brother pursued the creature,
which fled before him through the moonlight with gigantic strides, and
eventually seemed to disappear over the wall into the churchyard. Then
he rejoined his brother by the sister's bedside. She was dreadfully hurt
and her wound was a very definite one, but she was of strong
disposition, not given either to romance or superstition, and when she
came to herself she said, 'What has happened is most extraordinary and I
am very much hurt. It seems inexplicable, but of course there is an
explanation, and we must wait for it. It will turn out that a lunatic
has escaped from some asylum and found his way here.' The wound healed
and she appeared to get well, but the doctor who was sent for to her
would not believe that she could bear so terrible a shock so easily, and
insisted that she must have change, mental and physical; so her
brothers took her to Switzerland.

"Being a sensible girl, when she went abroad, she threw herself at once
into the interests of the country she was in. She dried plants, she made
sketches, she went up mountains, and, as autumn came on, she was the
person who urged that they should return to Croglin Grange. 'We have
taken it,' she said, 'for seven years, and we have only been there one;
and we shall always find it difficult to let a house which is only one
story high, so we had better return there; lunatics do not escape every
day.' As she urged it, her brothers wished nothing better, and the
family returned to Cumberland. From there being no upstairs in the
house, it was impossible to make any great change in their arrangements.
The sister occupied the same room, but it is unnecessary to say she
always closed her shutters, which, however, as in many old houses,
always left one top pane of the window uncovered. The brothers moved,
and occupied a room together exactly opposite that of their sister, and
they always kept loaded pistols in their room.

"The winter passed most peacefully and happily. In the following March
the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too
well--scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and looking up, she
saw, climbed up to the topmost pane of the window, the same hideous
brown shrivelled face, with glaring eyes, looking in at her. This time
she screamed as loud as she could. Her brothers rushed out of their room
with pistols, and out of the front door. The creature was already
scudding away across the lawn. One of the brothers fired and hit it in
the leg, but still with the other leg it continued to make way,
scrambled over the wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear
into a vault which belonged to a family long extinct.

"The next day the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin Grange,
and in their presence the vault was opened. A horrible scene revealed
itself. The vault was full of coffins; they had been broken open, and
their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered over the
floor. One coffin alone remained intact. Of that the lid had been
lifted, but still lay loose upon the coffin. They raised it, and there,
brown, withered, shrivelled, mummified, but quite entire, was the same
hideous figure which had looked in at the windows of Croglin Grange,
with the marks of a recent pistol-shot in the leg; and they did--the
only thing that can lay a vampire--they burnt it."

vampire 2

Croglin Grange...

...continues

THe story continues...

....She longed to get away, but
the door was close to the window and the door was locked on the inside,
and while she was unlocking it, she must be for an instant nearer to
_it_. She longed to scream, but her voice seemed paralysed, her tongue
glued to the roof of her mouth.

"Suddenly, she never could explain why afterwards, the terrible object
seemed to turn to one side, seemed to be going round the house, not to
be coming to her at all, and immediately she jumped out of bed and
rushed to the door, but as she was unlocking it, she heard scratch,
scratch, scratch upon the window, and saw a hideous brown face with
flaming eyes glaring in at her. She rushed back to the bed, but the
creature continued to scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window. She
felt a sort of mental comfort in the knowledge that the window was
securely fastened on the inside. Suddenly the scratching sound ceased,
and a kind of pecking sound took its place. Then, in her agony, she
became aware that the creature was unpicking the lead! The noise
continued, and a diamond pane of glass fell into the room. Then a long
bony finger of the creature came in and turned the handle of the window,
and the window opened, and the creature came in; and it came across the
room, and her terror was so great that she could not scream, and it came
up to the bed, and it twisted its long, bony fingers into her hair, and
it dragged her head over the side of the bed, and--it bit her violently
in the throat. ,.."

This is the actual text from Augustus Hare's book. 

.......More to come tomorrow......

vampire story

Vampire story

I Found this tale in one of the books in my collection,

 that you may have heard of, or not.

It comes from C. G. Harper's Haunted Houses book.

He quotes it as taken from  Augustus Hare's "Story of My Life" (1900)

 so this is a fairly old one. Harper wrote his book in 1907..

It refers to an event told to Augustus Hare, so it's already second hand, 

But as I don't tell vampire tales a lot, here it is...

This is about a place called Coglin Grange, 

which a family called Fisher had outgrown.

They let the grange to two brothers, and a sister, and

moved nearer to Guildford. The tenants  spent

 their first winter contentedly, and were liked in the neighbourhood.

Summer came, and on one very hot day,

and, although the brothers tried to study, it was too hot to work,

 so they dined early, and retired. The night was still hot, and

unable to sleep, the sister went and stood by her window,

looking out over a churchyard.

She began to notice flickering lights moving about in the belt of trees, 

separating the house from the churchyard.

 A figure slowly began to emerge. It increased in substance as

it drew closer, intermittently disappearing "Every now and then

 it was lost in the long shadows, which stretched across the lawn.

   from the trees, and then it emerged larger than ever 

and still coming on - on, and as she watched it,

 the most uncontrollable horror seized her........

to be continued.......

witch tales

Helen Duncan's story isn't really a story of a ghost, or a witch. 

SHe hss the dubious honour i believe of being the last

 person to be sentenced for witchcraft connected crimes

 (crimes?) in this country.

I Watched a rather peculiar old film last night on Showcase

probably a poor recording, as the film quality is often dire on this channel,

which i came across by chance, about a woman, who had been

 possessed by the spirit of a 'hag' called "She Beast."(1966)

The film quality was appalling.

Still it was an interesting story, and the image

 of the hag which overwhelms her appearance,

as the being goes on a rampage to revenge herself

 on the descendants of the villagers, who drowned her, 

is  interesting .What it shows of course is the

 attitude to the witch, that she must look like the

 wicked witch of the west.

I Had not seen this film before, as it doesn't seem to get an airing

on tv a lot. I actually like some of these kitchy hammer types of movies.

The story isn't subservient to as much gore as possible

Damn it though, doesn't the witch get a bad press!

 

Helen Duncan

THe Duncan story

YOu know of course about Helen Duncan. 

Her story took place in Portsmouth.

I Recall a tv drama re enacting the preposterous court case,

which landed her in jail.

IF you like old movies, then the medium,

who runs a little transport cafe on the way to Scotland

in the Kenneth More version of the 39 Steps

was based on her case.

It all began in 1939, with the outbreak of war, when 

Helen Duncan was holding seances in Edinburgh. 

In her audience that night was Brigadier Firebrace

Head of Scottish military intelligence.

It was then that she announced that the 

HMS Hood had been lost with all hands.

On one occasion a little later in Portsmouth,

she claimed to make contact with one of the dead crew 

of the HMS Barnham, which had been torpedoed and sunk,

by the name of Sid.

At the time the fact of the sinking was only known

 to a handful of military intelligence officers.

It transpired that there was a man called Sid on the crew

... well, was that a coincidence or what?

(Or put it another way, how common was the name Sid at that time?)

Sadly for her the government was in the throes of extreme 

paranoia, and thought that she might be a 6th columnist.

 It does seem unlikely in retrospect, knowing what we know now

 about the double dealing of the Nazi espionage machine, 

which is purported to be in the hands of those,

 who were not the avid supporters of Hitler

 that they claimed to be. That's by the way, however,

 as Helen Duncan found herself under suspicion

 because of her claims. Perhaps more likely they felt 

that she might inadvertently give away state secrets.

 She was tried under the 1735 witchcraft act for

Making contact with spirits.

.... more to come.......

portsmouth 3

Wymering manor (continued)...

The story goes that a newly married couple came 

to the manor. This cycle of the " star crossed lover" theme, of course, 

crops up again and again in the folklore of ghosts,

and this one is as usual, tragic. However,

the outcome in this case was a "better" one, maybe...

The husband was called away, and an individual 

called Sir Roderick, of Portchester, decided to call over and 

seduce the young bride. This story has a theme

with more moral overtones, as the husband returned

home unexpectedly, and caught Sir Roderick 

chasing him out into the manor grounds, and

killed him as he was attempting to mount his horse.

The story goes that if a newly married couple come to the house,

they will hear Sir Roderick's horse galloping down the lane.

Leonard Metcalfe, an occupant of the house,nwho died in 1958,

claimed that he and his new wife, just after WW2, 

were woken at 2 a.m. by the ghostly sound 

of a horse clattering away down the lane outside....

It might be interesting to see if there is an historical record,

which matches up with the story...

The Hampshire ghost club claim 18 ghosts

haunt Wymering, including a Scottie Terrier, a black cat,

A brother of Jane Austen, a monk as well as the nuns, 

disembodied voices, poltergeist activity, a piano playing,

the sound of children playing, a baby crying, and drops 

in temperature...

portsmouth 2

Portsmouth 2

The building, which gets the biggest press in Portsmouth for 

hauntings is like Hampshire's Borley Rectory,

Wymering Manor.

This piece of old Portsmouth has a bit of a reputation. 

Most Haunted went there in 2006. 

The council has since been trying to sell it.

Various testifying witnesses, who lived there, say that 

they had doors open on their own, and that they

saw apparitions, including a choir of chanting nuns,

The pannelled room is alleged to be oppressive.

The funny thing is that wood panelled rooms can feel that way.

I remember on my visit to Preston Manor in Brighton

that the wood pannelled area at the foot of the stairs felt

oppressive too. I wonder why that is?

Above thenpannelled room, it's said a nun is also seen,

dripping with  blood.

There's also a story about the sound

 of a horse gallopping outside.

That's a story in itself, so i'll tell that one tomorrow....

portsmouth

Portsmouth

This blog tried to post itself before i have even started.

Uhum... ghost in the machine...
I have been getting fed up with search engines on the internet
which assume that yiu are a buyer, and only take you to ebay
and Amazon. If that goes any way towards explaining why i miss
days maybe it's because i give up jn frustration.

Anyway to continue my look into folklore and hauntings
I'll go to one of my favourite coastal places, Portsmouth.
I ofte n get off the train at the northern station of Fratton,
And walk down into Southsea.i have wandered both
 sides of the line, though, not on the tracks of course.
Here's an old tale close to my heart.. of a witch.
This is the Froddington witch.
I assume Froddington doesn't exist any more,
A luminous witch inhabits the edges of Fratton Common,
She is supposed to whistle at passers-by and mesmerise them....
They then freeze, giving her time to disappear
There seem to be quite a few ghostly legends
 assocuated with Portsmouth, of people and things disappearing,
Probably in the sea mists blowing in from the Solent....
I don't know where Froddington wss but there is a Fratton pub
called the Froddington Arms.

The witch's local?

This is what wikipedia says about Froddington....
"Goldsmith's Farm and Fratton Common were part of the original small rural village originally called Froddington, the only visible evidence of this being the presence of a public house, "The Froddington Arms" on the western side of Fratton Road. Due to developments during the Industrial age, more of the surrounding land was absorbed by Portsmouth in the 1870s and 1880s, principally by new housing developments"

cuckfield

Cuckfield

What interests me especially is how the old lore 

tended to make ghost stories a little more bizarre. 

Take for instance the story of the haunting in the Tower

of London, where a group seated at a dinner table saw

a tube of liquid revolving in the air manifesting itself,

And sloshing around.

Or what about the ghost of a coal sack, 

which attacked and chased people walking 

through the streets at night.

That has to be one of the most weird hauntings ever.

It wouldn't sit well with the scientufic materialistic and prosaic

orientation of the mind of culture today.

Cuckfield's neighbouring village of Twineham can boast

another weird one, which has got into the fiction

of the supernatural a little more readily.

The Rectory has a number of ghosts, apparently, including

a black kid skin  glove, which crawls along the landing.

The rectory is worth a return visit, anyway,

 as it appears an active place.

 But for now, i'll stay with the general idea, 

given the association with witches noted at Wilmington Mill,

and the  Wesley Rectory, for instance, the witch's familiar

used to regularly creep into haunting stories,

and the spirit of a fast moving small animal

was often seen, usually by children.

Remember a witch was often supposed

 to take the form if a running hare to elude pursuit.

So what on earth would we make today of the tale of 

A haunting by Jef, the talking mongoose,

And to actually write a book about it?

folklore and ghosts

I think that it's very important, 

as there is a collapse of the culture of this country,

where colloquial wisdom has subsided.

Where the urban life has taken over,

There are now fewer of the countryside orientated festivals, 

and the annual celebrations have passed away,

leaving only a scattered few....

The pagan fire ceremonies persist in Sussex

with a flavour of the past, like the Lewes and Littlehampton

bonfire and torch lit processions, 

but generally, we have a heavily commercialised

Christmas, Halloween and New Year, 

which are only the vestigial form of the old ceremonies.

It was interesting reading through a book of old customs 

to see how many had lapsed away.

Did you know that on March 1st,

People went down from Arundel to the bridge over the Arun,

and shook themselves, because if they did that, 

they woukd be free of fleas all year!?

How many of you say 'white rabbit' at the beginning of each month,

as soon as you wake up.?

Where is the possibility of commercialising Michaelmas?

Charles Fort wrote down his discoveries of the strange

from all the newspapers that he could find.

Today we have youtube and facebook.

And the urban myth.

Like  we might believe that the government is in collusion

with the Greys to implant nanotechnology in abductees,

And cattle mutilations.

Not quite the same as children making sculptures out of oyster shells

to show the beginning of the oyster harvest is it?.

 We are at threat of losing the old knowledge and the sense 

of nature to the relentless march of dryasdust science,

and thhe creative to urban tawdriness.

folklore and ghosts

Ghosts 

The telling of a ghost story can catch on, and once it has,

it enters into folklore. Modern folklore is different in shape,

but behaves in the same way. 

We seem to have adopted the movie interpretation 

of vampires and zombies, 

and the new style overwrites the old forms.

Fairy sites, the old hills tors and forts, are now landing places 

for the greys, who appear in flying saucers,

rather than there being "the little people" under the earth,

and that in itself was an adaptation of an older interpretation

of mysterious sightings of dark unknowable beings in these spiritual places.

No doubt it could be described as the idiom changing,

but the undoubted power of the place remaining the same.

These days it seems to be the psychic researcher visiting a 

haunted inn or museum, or hospital, and coining the name "Eddie" 

Or "John", and that entering the folklore, rather

than someone saying "this fits the story of such and such, 

who died there under tragic circumstances.

Today the expression for this is "urban myth".

Modern folklore...tales suited to the machine age or

the digital world.

And we don't worry about seeing the Lyminster worm", 

Or that our children could be replaced by changelings,

but whether or not we can be abducted by E.T

And have bits of nanotechnology implanted in our necks like asbos.

What's the Lyminster Worm.? A serpentine creature,

alleged to have eaten virgins in the area between Littlehampton

and Arundel, * a great beast, from deep pools of water which

riddled the ground to the south of the Downs, 

from Worthing to Arundel,

But who today would be worried about meeting a dragon

on the road late at night, with all the traffic pouring through?

(*personally, i'll believe anything of Littlehampton!)

ghostly whispers

Stories and fact...

I am going to leave Brighton, for the time being, as 

I have no information on Brighton hauntings in my own library, 

And i'll resume this study, when and where i find a decent book

which predates the ghost tour fad.

I just crave authentication myself, not to claim that the sources 

used by these people are not credible in themselves.

(I just don't know what these sources are)

I'll  consider the whole process of Chinese Whispers

with regard to ghost stories.

I was reading a folklore book and was interested to read

 about the interpretation of folklorists on the development

of such stories. One the author quoted

relates to the Cissbury ring tales of witches.

Her suggestion was that since the development 

of pagan world views, and wicca in particular, 

and Druid, and Wicca ceremonies being performed in these places,

a back development of association with witches

could have been prompted, when there was no evidence

to support it. I have to admit that the idea that modern day witches

or druids might actually represent a continuity with the actual

practices, which they compare themselves with, 

isn't guaranteed. 

Ghost stories anyway seem to reflect the obsessions of the age.

We don't believe in fairies now, but we seem to be inclined to

believe in little green (or grey) men....

Modern fairies?

Brighton

Brighton

I  have had  some trouble verifying Brighton as the most haunted city.

The problem is that i have no mention of it to speak of in the majority 

of my collection of ghost gazetteers. 

I'll carry on looking through my library and the internet, and return to it

but I do wonder how much is hyped by the ghost tour people...

What i do remember is that the Grand was haunted, up the seafront...

For fairly minimal information and a series of photos of sites try this....

http://www.paranormaldatabase.com/hotspots/brighton.php?pageNum_paradata=1

And a number of these are quite familiar to me. I believe that

a relative of mine died at the Grand. I was trying to remember which 

I'll get back on that.

One that catches my attention is the Dyke Tavern, on Dyke Road.

which recently seems to have gone out of business

and now hosts an antique shop.....

probably one of the oddest albeit weirdly appropriate uses for a pub.

They have a woman in grey, it says,

standing beside a fireplace in the bar. 

I wonder what she makes of it all?

There are local attempts to get the pub open again. 

I wonder if she woukd add her signature to the petition. 

That would make the petitionvery historic!

The Royal Albion Hotel has more information, 

and has a range of paranormal activity,

 like lifts and doors  moving by themselves, 

temperature dropping 

and the ghost of Sir Henry Preston, a previous owner,

 and philanthropist,  who owned it  in 1913.

Solomon 2

The murder

The perpetrator, Lawrence, appears to have been the last man

to be hung in Horsham. That could need verifying.

He's also a record-breaker in being the only man

 to have killed a chief of police whilst in custody.

The ghost

So what about the ghost? It's been built up a lot, 

Perhaps partly by the ghost tour, but undoubtedly

by publicity associated with the police museum at Brighton 

Town Hall. What a selling point!

But actual cases of witness sightings?

You do find information about "poltergeist activity..."

for which read objects moving of their own accord.

The story of the bedclothes moving on the mannequin on the bed

obviously post date its conversion into a museum.

Solomon is reputed to be seen as the figure of a man wearing 

a top hat. I would assume that he might have not died

had he been wearing the top hat at the time?

In Paranormal Sussex, it says that humanoid shadows 

have also been seen, and a team investigating 

heard a girl's voice saying "hello" as an EVP.

However, clearly again the evidence post dates

Its opening as a museum.

But undoubtedly things were seen or heard before then...

I'm still looking, and if i find a tale to relate, i'll post it here.....

Brighton

Brighton 

claims to be a very haunted city.

Wherever a town or city develops ghost tours

these claims find their way into the press...

It's now one of the most haunted cities in England.

Well it probably actually is...

My blind basket maker musician ancestor lived In Brighton.

James Duffey, a music teacher in Bristol originally,

who ended his life in Marylebone Workhouse.

And six of his twelve children, I believe it was,

All died in their infancy here.

 They lived in the Laines, not then the hippy fashionable

touristy place that they are now.

I do not want to enter here tales, which come from the 

published blurb of the ghost walk. They are not 

in themselves credentials for hauntings.

I want to tell tales which have origin elsewhere,

which if they verify thise given in the advertising literature

well and good.

We'll start with Henry Solomon, whose ghost is purported to

haunt the old town hall, where the police cells museum is.

He became the town's first chief constable in 1838.

In 1844 he was murdered. On March 14th the police

 arrested John Lawrence, for attempting to steal a roll of carpet

from a shop in St James Street.

Apparently whilst being questinoed there, Lawrence became

agitated, and picked up a poker, which was in the room

- what kind of safety sense did the police then have,

for goodness sake?- and struck Solomon a blow,

which ruptured his skull.

Headline Brighton Gazette 21st March.

Solomon was treated by doctors at the scene, then rushed to his home 

A short distance away, but died soon afterwards.

Lawrence, who should perhaps have thought before he acted,

was executed for the murder, on the 6th April in Horsham, 

That's the story.. now what about the story of the ghost?

Hangketon hangman

Hangleton hangman

I had a bad day yesterday... what are they called... duvet days?

So as we're under the duvet,maybe now's the time to hide underneath

and cower from what's entered the room.

I thought i might look at Brighton, in and around...

One that sounds interesting is the hangman of Hangleton....

Apparently the presence of savage death lingers here,

Where there used to be a gallows, and it's said to be one of the few places, 

where you can find a wild raven....

The spirit of the hangman has been seen..

roaming a stretch of the old Shoreham Road.

He is seen through windiws normally

tall, burly, wearing ragged clothes...

With black cloth tied around his head...

Noises are heard outside the window to attract 

attention to him, but he is only seen whilst unaware of being seen.

When the witness catches his gaze, then he vanishes.

There is even a name attributed to the ghost.

Thomas Kypper, a brutal individual who had even been accused of two

murders in his own right....He was finally accused of battering his 

neighbour, a blacksmith, to death, 

 and tried and found guilty and died on his own gibbet.

 

Bosham Bell

Bosham bell

This i found, appears to be a depiction of the longboat

by an artist Robert Taylor Pritchett, 1828-1907

A wood engraving.

 

Bosham is also alleged to be where that famous

incident, which we all learnt in school, happened..

Where King Canute taught his entourage a lesson, 

by trying to hold back the tide!

The concept was to prove to his courtiers, that even

though he was King of England, he couldn't hold back the sea.

Maybe the dykes built in Chichester harbour couldn't hold it back either,

Because apparently he sat there in a "chair..."

Where a dyke or wall of earth was called a "char" in  Saxon. 

All of these legends relate to the boundary between the land and the sea,

And the difficulties of protecting these gateways from outside forces.

 

bells underwater

Underwater Bells

It's always fascinated me, where there are tales of villages, 

which have been encroached on by the sea,

along the coast. In these places a common tale is

 that the ghostly sound of bells can be heard ringing out at sea.

I didn't know that Sussex had one. 

There are apparently insrances of this at Bulverhythe 

which is a suburb of Hastings.

Bosham again has a similar tale.

This is often credited with being a forewarning of bad weather.

A legend has it that the Vikings were responsible. 

They took the great tenor bell frim the monsstery,

 and hauled it up onto their longboat

during a raid, and the monks rang out  other bells, 

as the longboat put out to sea,

a result of which was that the bell toppled over in the boat,

and rolled off into the water, 

and all of the Viking marauders went under with it.

The legend also has it that the bell below the water replies 

to any ringing on shore.

Any ship dropping anchor over the Bell Hole, 

where it rests,will have its anchor seized, and that 

they would not be able to retrieve it!

The bell being very magnetic, perhaps?

the Devil's Doors

 

Just as an afterthought for the Cuckfield Horde,

you do wonder, don't you, why a spirit or a demon might be fooled by

such tricks as these...surely a demon thinks, doesn't it?

At least if they didn't how could they know how to attack you in ways

which cause fearful reactions? And be noted for their deceitfulness?

It's a bit like saying animals don't think, or have feelings, 

because they aren't people.

Well, being Buddhist, i believe that there is a wheel of life on which 

the soul travels, and from life to life you could 

yourself become an animal, or a demon....dependant on how you behaved

in your previous life.

I was reading about another superstitious tradition,

That of the Devil's doors.

The tradition has it that the North door of a church

Is where the devil enters, or leaves, and

A lot of North doors are - consequently? - blocked up.

The idea is that the pagan elements came in through those doors to

Worship, in the pre-Christian days, when the site was pagan.

A lot of churches of course overstood and took over

Previously pagan sites.

I came across a mention of a case, where during a baby's baptism 

the blocked-up door was opened, to allow the Devil to leave...

Did they believe that the baby might grow up to be possessed by a demon?

Bosham church once had a blocked up door, which was not to be opened 

under any circumstances... 

You see how important doorways are in the superstitious mind.

evil spirits of sussex

Demons in sussex

Well, i've been hunting for evidence of the pagan concept 

lingering in my county of residence.

If people have a long standing fear of demons and witchcraft

which would qualify.

Here's an interesting one that i came across.

The Cuckfield hoard.

During restoration in the attic of a house in Church Street,

old floorboards, which were riddled with woodworm, were pulled up 

and an assortment of items were found.
Clothes, toys and other items dating from Victorian times back to the 1700s.
Experts believe that the idea of placing them there could have been
to trick evil forces, spirits, demons, into believing that
these items, which had been used or worn, were the house's inhabitants.
11 loose shoes, not pairs, decided to date from 1860-1914,
a man's leather hat a child's dress,  a doll's arm,
A set of building bricks, an exercise book,a couple of jars,
 railway timetables, a cigarette packet
In fact several generations worth of material.
And a latchet tie shoe from 1800,

The idea of burying items on thresholds
 to protect doorways is an old one.
Clearly here maybe the threat could come from above....
Or perhaps the inhabitants had heard unexplained noises in their attic?
It has also been suggested that empty jars are used to collect
any spirits, which might drop in, and trap them.