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.