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GHOST STORY
Each month we select a 'Ghost Story' sent to us by our readers and subscribers.
Updating the January essay
THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
This story is true. There were seven of us in all who witnessed this very strange event and it was mentioned in our local newspaper, ‘The Charlbury Times,’ and our own monthly village newsletter, ‘The Village Wold.’ It took place in the village hall at Sarsden at Christmas time in 1996. The hall had been decorated for our annual village Christmas Dance and Function, to raise money in aid of church events and put together Christmas parcels for the children and the elderly in our local hospital in Charlbury. I and six of my committee members organised and ran the event, and tickets were sold out well before the Christmas Dance and Function was held on the second saturday in December.
The week prior to the function we all met in the evenings and decorated the hall from top to bottom, culminating with a huge Christmas tree supplied by the management of the Cotswold Farm Park. The tree was all of sixteen foot high and required several high ladders to get all the decorations and all the lights on it. Poor Margery Hale nearly met her maker when the ladder she was on began to rock backwards and forwards, but luckily two of us saw what might happen and we grabbed the ladder and held it firm. Margery declined to dress the upper part of the tree after that.
After all the decorations were up on the tree and around the hall the tables were laid out, covered with tablecloths and decorated with real flowers. In all we had sold 180 tickets so the tables took up all the available floor space. The small kitchen in the hall was where we brought our prepared Christmas food to, and with several ovens to keep things warm the dinner was served that saturday to over 180 very hungry people. Turkey, stuffing, all kinds of vegetables, gravy, and large Cotswold style Yorkshire puddings cut into squares, followed by Christmas pudding with hot custard or thick Devon cream. Everyone was full. The dance went on until 1 am and at 2 am we ladies, with several helpers, were tired out and ready to go home to our beds. But the Christmas tree had other plans!
We had cleared up just about everything, leaving the tree and the decorations until after Christmas. I and Janice were the last out. We turned off all the lights and of course the lights on the tree, then locked the main door and got into my car. As we pulled away we both gave a glance back to the hall, and to our amazement we saw the lights on the tree glowing through the windows. Being tired as we were I just assumed I had forgot to turn them off. I went back in and turned them off. Off they went. I came out, got in the car - and there they were - on again! Come with me Janice and tell me what I’m doing wrong. In we went, switched them off, and came out, got in the car, and before I turned on the ignition - we saw the lights on. Okay I said, I’ll pull the plug. Inside I pulled the plug from the wall, came out, and at last - no lights. But.....this ‘lights on’ thing went on right upto Christmas day, when we at last took the tree down. An electrician checked the on/off switches and they were all fine. The lights were checked, and nothing unusual. We scratched our heads.
THE BOOK SHOP
Charing Cross Road in London is known for its many book shops, one being the world renowned Foyles where they say you can get you any book that was ever printed if you give them the time to find it, and the promise to pay for it. It’s all the other bookshops on this famous street that fascinate me, specially those that sell very old books and the simply used books. When I first went upto Charing Cross Road in the late 1960’s I thought an afternoon of poking around Foyles and other bookshops would be enough. Hardly. It is now over forty years later and I am still ‘browsing.!’
After my return from working many years in the far east, mainly in Australia, I could hardly wait to renew my life among the bookshops. I’d visited these quiet librarian havens many times on the frequent holidays I’d taken from my work abroad, but now I was back for good and Charing Cross Road and all its bookshops became my constant day out in London. I returned home for good in 2001 and settled near Wimbledon in south London. Soon I was going up-town to visit at least once a week and it was during my first few visits some strange encounters began. It all started quite innocently without me knowing that my very helpful shop clerk did not exist!
One rainy day I came into the Henry Pordes bookshop at number 58/60 Charing Cross Road and began my usual look around. The gentleman at the main desk had got to know me and smiled briefly as I disappeared behind the rows upon rows of books on every subject from the arts to zoology. I never really seek out specific books although on this occasion I had it in mind to find something on Dennis Potter the English playwright known for ‘The Singing Detective’ and other plays. As I searched the appropriate section a youngish man in a very old style three piece suit came up to me and asked if he could help. I told him my needs and he pointed out several books to that end. With a smile he quickly left and after awhile I took my purchases to the counter. ‘Found what you were looking for,’ the man asked as I pulled out my credit card. ‘Yes indeed, thanks to your young assistant.’ He looked at me with squinty eyes and cast a few glances over my shoulder. ‘Who did you say?’ he asked. ‘The young man in the period looking three piece suit.’ Nothing more was said. I paid and went on my way.
A week later I was back in the shop this time looking for something on Elizabeth Bowen the Irish writer and in the same area of the shop. Sure enough this young man appeared again and this time I engaged him in some talk. I asked his name - Wilbur. I asked how long he’d worked there - too long, he replied. He found several books for me and again took off behind the rows of books. Paying at the counter I purposely mentioned Wilbur. ‘Wilbur you say,’ said the frowning man. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and still in that period three piece suit.’ I paid for my books but the man asked me to wait a moment. Another person took over at the counter and this gentleman took me into the area where I had met Wilbur. He began, ‘Wilbur is our resident ghost. He used to work here. We can’t get rid of him, and nor would we really like to.’ Wilbur and I are now firm friends!
THE CANAL BOAT MYSTERY
This is about the time I lived on a canal boat in ‘The Inlet’ at Cockpole Green near Henley-on-Thames. Readers will recall, I hope, my monthly column for Brits Abroad entitled ‘Country Traveller’ that had part of its beginning in the time I spent living on a canal boat. It was one of the best periods of my life. I had a great friend in the next boat (there were only three boats in The Inlet) by the name of Liz, a delightful old dear who could cook so well. She made the best pies, tarts, cakes, and bread I’ve ever tasted. I also began a refuge for abandoned or retired horses, refurbishing an old barn that had been left to rot in a nearby field. These were great times, and as is the case with life, it sadly moves on, not always by joice, more often than not by circumstances. However, Ken and I were emailing each other recently and we were talking about ‘ghost stories’ and how everyone has at least one to tell. Including yours truly! One about a canal boat. So turn out the lights, cosy up to the fire, and listen
The Inlet was a quiet, very secluded place with a tiny island in the middle of it about 25 feet by 25 feet rising to a small mound in the middle. On this island dwelt the most poopy ducks I’ve ever seen! In fact the island was affectionately called ‘Duck**** Island.’ These ducks were noisy at dawn and at dusk, in between times they just clucked a bit and paddled around The Inlet. Except one night about 1 am when there was an almighty cuffuffle that woke Liz and I up. I went on deck and over by the island was this strange looking boat that seemed to have a glow about it. The boat was odd shaped, more like a tug than a canal boat. I could hear also a kind of a humming noise. The ducks were frantic, then suddenly it turned a full 180 degrees and without a sound it sailed out through the narrow gap into the Thames and was gone. I saw Liz looking at its departure and called to her, ‘well what was that then?’ ‘Come over and I’ll make tea and tell you all about it’ she replied, so I did. Here we were at about 1.am, on a still dark night, sitting in her cosy canal boat, drinking tea and me eating a couple of her crumble-top apple tarts. This is what she told me, and it gives me goose-pimples to repeat it.
‘I’ve seen that boat only a few times before and when I first saw it I was right scared. I asked around up and down the river about it and finally an old woman down by Shiplake told me the story. Seems there were a fight among the many different kind of river barge owners over transporting of goods from different river merchants up to London. There were never enough help in loading and unloading the goods and young boys from up London way, the poorer parts, were hired in their dozens. These boys, even a few girls, never got a fair wage and were worked all day and were expected to sleep in the barges at night, often only for a few hours. One night during some bad local flooding the old dear told me a bunch of kids jumped out of the barge as they passed the entrance into The Inlet here and swam to the island in the middle. Not everyone made it apparently, a couple of poor kids getting swept on down the river. The barge owner came into The Inlet and dragged a few of the boys back on board, but two lads apparently took hold of the barge owner and pushed his head into the mud, then ran his barge up over his body until he were dead. Now, according to her, he comes back with a fierce glow in his eyes looking for those boys. Right scary I can tell you.’
THE CANARY ROOM.
Ghost stories are usually creepy things people whisper about in the corner of pubs as they’re downing a few pints. Words are spoken softly and eyebrows are raised. People nod as if they understand. And one story will give birth to many more and before you know it everyone around your table has got a ghost story to tell. Where I came from it was even worse than that. Everyone for miles around would come into Scarcroft just to hear the canary sing in the back room at No. 10 Wilkins Crescent. No matter who was living there. This bird had sung his warbling song for over 40 years before I left in 1977, and when I go back for holidays; I now live in Canada by the way, I’d go by there myself to hear the legendary ghostly canary sing.
Local folklore says the owners of this terraced house had this canary hanging in a cage in the rear window of the back room that overlooks the garden. Apparently it was really old, ten years or more they say, and every day when the sun crossed the sky it would sing a happy canary song for a good hour. Then one day his owner, a Mrs. Margaret Mason died suddenly and they carted her off in the coroner’s van leaving the poor canary all on its own. No one knows the canary’s name, as Maggie Mason was quite a private sort of person who seemed to have no relatives. It was her next door neighbour who alerted the police when she didn’t see Maggie in the garden as usual. Several days later someone from the council came round and ordered the house emptied of furniture, and that’s when they found the canary, dead in his cage. They say the workman cleaning the house shook the dead little body of the canary out of the back window, and threw the cage in with the rest of her belongings. The house stood empty well into the next year, then one day the neighbour who alerted the police heard a canary singing, and it was coming from the empty back room. The sun was shining right into the room, it being late afternoon. She craned her neck but could not see any bird or cage in the window.
The months went by and new people moved into the house, and sure enough on most sunny days the ghostly bird would sing for awhile, but would stop if anyone entered the room. The new people used the back room as a bedroom and said they never saw anything and only heard the bird for short bursts if they were home. A local radio station sent a reporter and they recorded the bird singing, faintly, but listeners thought they were faking it, but a few didn’t, and No.10 Wilkins Crescent became famous.
I’ve been back on visits many times and when the sun shines (not every day - but most days) I try to make it down to No.10 and ask the owners or the neighbours if I can take a listen. The original neighbour has gone and now a grumpy family living next door have a painted sign up saying: ‘No, we do not allow people to go into our back yard.’ The owners have a similar sign, and the neighbours on the other side have a sign that says simply: ‘£100 per person per listen - no cheques.’ All the same the old ghostly bird sings when he feels like it and will forever more. I don’t think I’d like to live there, but maybe I would. I’d only charge a fiver!
THE BODY ON THE PATH.
This really isn’t a ghost story. Well it might be. One thing about this story is that the events my friend Mel and myself experienced whilst hiking the North Pennines were very weird indeed. Mel and I were avid hikers, and when you live near the North Pennines in Cumbria you have some of the very best hiking there is to be found in England. We both live just east of Penrith and on most weekends when our wives let us get away we were off to the high ground and the high trails.. There’s the mighty Cross Fell where the River Tees has its birth place and a little north is Melmerby Fell, not as high as Cross Fell but with spectacular views in all directions. The famous Pennine Way crosses from Dufton up over to Garrigill, a superb hike that we’ve done together many a time. The incident I want to tell you about happened back in the late 1980’s before I went off to Canada to seek my fortune. Incidently, I made no fortune and missed the Pennines so much I returned in the late 1990’s. But, on with the story..
Mel and I had motored over to a small village called Knock, parked our car and started out to join the Pennine Way from just below us in Dufton. A few miles into the hike we were crossing through the Milburn Forest (not a forested area at all as the name suggests) on our way upto Cross Fell, a hike we’d done scores of times before and in all weathers. This late morning it was hot. It was August and the sky was blue with hardly a breeze, uncommon for the Fells as wind up here can be mild to furious all day long. Just off the path we were on runs a small stream, and both being thirsty we dropped down into the small gorge and cupped some sweet, cold, pure water into our hands. It was magnificent.
As we sat taking in the vast panoramic views westwards across the patterned fields and villages and on into the Lake District, we noticed a man laying on his side just up a ways on what appeared to be a small pathway. Mel and I went up to see what we might be able to do leaving our backpacks by the stream. The man was dressed in the strangest clothes, reminding me of someone in a bad period costume in a local amateur play. He even looked as if he had makeup on, his face being shiny and as if covered in a foundation cream. We asked if he needed help and he just shook his head. We tried to help him up but he seemed to weigh a ton. It was all very strange and touching him on the arm I felt as if I’d just touched something that had been removed from a deep freeze.
He refused help, sat himself up, and waved his hand as if to say ‘I’ll be alright, be on your way.’ So we did. We gathered up our backpacks and continued our hike. Later that day after hiking all the way to Alston we came back the same route and slid down to the stream for another drink. Whilst sitting there we tried to find the small path this man was on that morning. There wasn’t one. We did a search - nothing. ‘But it was right here,’ said a puzzled Mel. ‘You’re right,’ I replied and we paced out the actual place where we had found the man.
Back in Knock the pubs were opening so we decided to buy ourselves a well earned pint of best bitter. We got talking to the landlord of the pub and told him our story. He told us ‘the man on the path’ is seen by hikers every now and then. The last sighting was two years before. And that stories have it that back in the 1890’s he was on his way over the Fell late one night when he was robbed and left to die. We bought more beer!
THE PHANTOM BICYCLE
I grew up in the village of Moorhouse not far from Newark-on-Trent in the famed area of Nottinghamshire where the remains of Sherwood Forest still bring in the visitors in their thousands every year. And of course all our games as young children were all about Robin Hood, Will Scarlet, and the portly Friar Tuck. Many tales circulated around this area about that famous man, who was supposed to be the Earl of Loxley disguised as the worlds first activist. Anyhow, that’s how my dad always thought of him, saying, he was the first one to go up a tree and defend the plight of the underdog! Whatever, we played our games with homemade bows and arrows and fought each other on logs straddling the many streams and brooks that meandered through this most beautiful part of England.
But my story is not about Robin Hood and his merry men, it’s about a bicycle, a riderless bicycle that was often seen gliding along the quiet lanes at night with a ghostly lamp on the front handlebars lighting the way. Again, as with Robin Hood many stories circulated about this often seen apparition and long before I ever saw it for myself I had many different theories to attach to this strange story. One was that it was an old farm worker, Bill Oddley (good name we all thought) who was knocked down and killed one night just after the first world war by a speeding car that never stopped. Bill Oddley had survived the trenches only to lose his life to a hit and run driver. Such is life we all thought.
Another story favoured by the regulars of the Green Woods public house was that it was a certain Katie Sutton who went looking for her boyfriend one night when he didn’t show up for a date, only to have the locals find the bike but never the body of Katie. The boyfriend had an alibi they say and he soon left the village, but the bike still appears gliding through the country lanes at night but without Katy, whose remains might well have been burried in some dark corner of a dark field - and the bike is searching for her - or him!
Anyway, myself and two pals had to test the theory of the phantom bicycle so we decided to get our bikes, hide close to the lane the bike was mostly seen on, and follow its trail - at a safe distance. But like all plans of mice & men we waited, and waited, until our parents got very annoyed at us coming home late every night. Until one clear, moonlit night in the month of October we were out scrumping a few bags of apples under the stars when we saw this ghostly light coming down the lane. We quickly hid behind the orchard wall and peered nervously over the top. Was this Katy’s bike, or some farmer looking for scrumpers. In awhile this fading yellow light glided by, attached to a riderless bicycle, and the three of us just gaped in amazement, looking at each other as if we’d seen a ghost, and of course we had. We tiptoed out into the lane and with exaggerated long silent steps we followed the slow moving bike. Suddenly a car came towards us, lights blazing, catching for one brief moment the bicycle in full view. Then it just disappeared. The car stopped. So did we. ‘Did you see what I saw,’ said the driver?’
THE LIGHTS ON PARKER’S HILL
Growing up in the village of Heaton, a small hamlet close by the town of Leek in Staffordshire is always looked back on as perhaps the best years of my life. Those days were the 1950’s and it was not until the early 1970’s that I left Heaton and went out into the world. Many great wonders were to be found in and around Heaton for my brother and I as we grew up through our first 15 years, not least the strange lights that would appear on top of Parker’s Hill, just a few miles away. The hill is not high, perhaps just under a 800 feet, and it’s mostly bare, covered in sheep-nibbled grass, with several paths leading to the top. Once on the top you can look down on the great Tittesworth reservoir, across to Leek itself, and on really clear days you can see all the way to Buxton. We ventured up there many times during the spring and summer months, but we never went up there at night.
There are weird, strange lights that appear on the very top of Parker’s Hill on several nights of the year. Not every night, but on clear, moonlit nights you can see from miles around moving circular lights that look like big headlights of a lorry or car. As we grew into our teens we asked all the locals how long they’d seem them and the concensus is that they were never seen before WW1. It was after that war that they first appeared and several locals who had lost husbands, sons, and other family members in WW1 read into the appearances as being a sign from their departed loved ones that they were in the ‘other life.’ "Oh ar, that be old Tom and his mates who all died in the great war," the locals would tell us, "and they come back every summer to tell us all they’re all right. That’s all that is. Mark my words.’ Surprisingly, most of the local people agreed with that statement, even the non-churchgoers and a few local atheists! But my brother William and I never went along with that theory.
We decided to investigate. Our plan was cunningly simple, we’d dress up like sheep and make our way to the top of Parker’s Hill on the next night we saw the lights! We watched and waited. No sign of lights at all. We were now in mid summer, on school break, and working during the day in the fields helping with the haymaking. Then one clear night at about 11 oclock, we lay on our backs looking up at the twinkling stars, and occasionally throwing a glance up to the top of Parker’s Hill. And there they were, about ten of them swaying and diving, but all on the very top of the hill. We sprung into action, our route up already planned and our sheep skins cunningly placed over our crouching bodies! A friend, Colin, stayed in view of the hill to make sure we returned and were not whisked off in a flying saucer!
We crawled up on our tummies. We could see the lights dancing and waving. We got to within a few yards of them, dropped our sheep skins - and charged. Nothing. They were gone. We shouted and cursed then after awhile made our way down. We asked Colin did he see the lights disappear. "No." he said, "Look, they’re still there and have been there all the time. Are you sure they weren’t there when you got to the top?" he asked. ‘Absolutely sure,’ we both replied.
MAY GHOST STORY: GRANDMA'S CUPBOARD
When I was a young girl growing up in Kirkham, which is near Blackpool, we’d often get the bus on sundays and visit my Mum’s Gran, a dear old lady we called Granny Gable, who was in her eighties. She always put on a good spread for us all on sunday, being my Mum, Dad, myself and my sister Julie. If it was in the summer it was a ham salad plate with all the salad items laid out in neat piles on your plate, with thin ham slices on one edge. Piles of bread and butter would be on a plate in the centre of the table and a huge pot of tea sat by Gran with the pot under a big coloured tea cosy. With the salad finished she’d bring out her specialty which was always cream sandwich sponge cake. After our late afternoon dinner Mum and Dad would spend an hour with Gran whilst we girls played in a large back room where Gran kept some old toys, a desk, a few suitcases, and some boxes that were full of books we were told. It was a pleasant room, gaily decorated, and Julie and I loved poking around in there. Until one day on a wet sunday afternoon.
In the room was a small built-in cupboard that had been built into an alcove by the fireplace. It had two tall doors and inside was a rack for hanging clothes. We’d looked inside many times and seen some of Grans old dresses and coats hanging there. I remember they always smelt musty with a feint scent of Devon violets. On this particular sunday I opened the cupboard and jumped back. Julie jumped up from the desk and asked what was the matter. I said I just saw someone looking right at me. Who she said. I replied I didn’t know but it looked like a very scared old lady with great big wide eyes. I had shut the door and stood with my back against it. ‘Let’s have a look inside,’ said a smiling and unbelieving sister. ‘Alright,’ I replied, ‘but you open it and look in.’ I stood facing the other way as Julie edged the doors open. She was giggling. ‘There’s no one in here,’ she said rather disappointingly, and closed the doors. ‘Now you look,’ she said, ‘and I’ll stand behind you.’ I opened the doors very gingerly and as I did Julie yelled out ‘Boo,’ and I nearly died of fright.
It was several weeks later when we visited Granny Gable again, and of course Julie and I were very curious to look inside the cupboard again. We’d said nothing to our parents or to Gran about what I had seen so they didn’t know what our purpose was to finish our dinner quickly and go into the spare room. Thankfully it was another mucky day and we had to amuse ourselves in the room rather than go out into the garden. Once in the room Julie and I could hardly wait to gently open the cupboard doors. I said I’d do it as long as Julie didn’t make me jump again. I pulled on the doors but they wouldn’t move. They were locked. ‘Damn’ said Julie, but then she remembered seeing a key in the drawer of the desk. She fetched it, and sure enough it fitted. With a gentle turn I pulled open the doors slowly - and nothing.
We stayed in the room a little while longer until Dad called us to say they were going to get ready to leave. One more try we thought. I went over to the doors and once again I opened them up slowly. Julie was right behind me. The cupboard was dark inside, but we both ‘felt’ something that gave us goosebumps. Then we smelt a strong odor of scent, and in the darkness inside the cupboard this face appeared. It was very old, very craggy and the eyes were huge and watery. We screamed and ran for our lives!
THE HAUNTED LAKE
Canada has a lot of lakes. Very quiet lakes. Lakes way out in the ‘boonies’ (wilderness) where people hardly ever go. Catching fish is easy. Row out into the middle, cast a long line with a spinner on it, and reel it in. Sounds like fun eh? That’s what I thought when my fellow immigrant Brit Tom, who had been in Canada four years, invited me out one sunday to a lake he knew of where the fishing was good.
This lake fishing thing was new to me. My fishing had been done on the Avon from a leafy bank in the quiet and beautiful countryside of Hampshire. You walked in, fished most of the day, ate your sandwiches and drank your flask of tea, and if you caught anything worthwhile it was rare. Fishing to me was not so much about catching fish, it was more about the pleasures of fishing and the surroundings it came with.
We arrived at the lake about fifty miles or so north of Toronto late morning under an overcast sky. We took the canoe off the top of the car, got out our gear, loaded up and slipped silently into the still and placid water. We glided out into the lake, our paddles hardly making a splash as we eased ourselves forward. A mist hung onto the shore, and that creepy sound of lakeland Canada, a Loon, called out across the water. The lake was no bigger than about three of four football fields and it was edged with pines and other evergreens. It was utterly still and quiet. Not a sound. Keeping silent ourselves seemed to be the norm.
It began to rain. Tom swore, saying he’d forgotten his rain gear. We paddled the 200 yards or so back to the lake shore where the car was parked and he jumped out. As he did so he somehow pushed the canoe back out into the lake with me in it. ‘Oy’ I called out, my voice echoing from one side of the lake to the other, ‘get my extra jacket would you.’ You can get awfully wet in a boat. But suddenly the rain stopped and I took the paddle and gently pushed the canoe back to shore. As I did a huge swell of water rose from under the boat with bubbles bursting all around. I looked over the side trying to see what it was. The canoe was sent back into the centre of the lake. Then everything went still.
Tom stood on the shore without saying a word. He gestured his arm for me to come in. He seemed oddly frightened. I began to paddle but the canoe failed to move. I thought I must be caught up on something, perhaps from that sudden upsurge of water. I looked over the side and there, just under the water was this most awful face looking up at me. It was big and round, with huge green eyes and its mouth was saying something. Two long arms rose from this figures side and long streams of brown hair swirled around the whole body. I looked over to Tom and he was now frantically gesturing me to come ashore. And I did. I dug the paddle into the water and ran the canoe right up onto the muddy beach.
‘What the hell was that out there?’ I asked a worried looking Tom. ‘It’s the ghost, the thing, whatever you want to call it.’ ‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘that’s all. I thought I’d caught a monster fish.’ ‘More like a monster from the murky deep,’ replied Tom, 'I'll tell you all about on the way home - now.'
MARCH GHOST STORY: 'THE HAUNTED PEW.'
Churches are not supposed to be haunted, at least you wouldn’t think so. And if one does see an apparition in a church or something that looks like a ghost I’m sure our first thoughts would be that it was God-like, being a sort of ‘Holy Ghost.’ But what I heard about the small age-old church in the nearby village of Fifield was anything but a Holy Ghost being more like a long lost spirit who didn’t know when to go home.
Stories circulated around the nearby villages that the old church in Fifield was haunted. It was standard gossip on cold evenings as you sat by a good log fire in the local pubs and told age old tales about everything from old Tom the six fingered blacksmith, to Mad Mary the old witch of Warfield, all long gone but all good for a re-telling and revising of the facts. One story I loved to hear was about the haunted pew in Fifield church. Stories had it that late on any dark sunday night, after the church clock had chimed the midnight hour, you could peer through one of the church windows and see a ghostly apparition, all white and sort of misty looking, sitting in a third row pew on the righthand side. And many an old codger would say over his pint, ‘Oh ar, I done seen old Willie more an’ once, I can tell ee.’
As the years rolled by and I married and started a family I decided, with the aid of my best friend Norman Peel, to enter the church late one sunday night and see for myself this so-called weekly appearance in misty white of an old villager named Willie. I had planned to do this all by myself but a rash of goosepimples quickly changed my mind. Norm was game, and the sunday was picked. We would enter the church; being the only time we’d ever gone there - not being churchgoers as such, by the back door, which was usually locked said Norman but who at the same time was certain he could pick the lock. We’d get there well before midnight, take a flask of coffee with us and a camera with a flash. Came the fateful day Norm and I waited in a nearby pub having downed several pints then made our way gingerly to the church back door. It was incredibly dark, and church’s all seem to be surrounded with grave stones, with creepy looking trees, and the paths seem to all be crunchy gravel. We crept up to the back door, and to our surprise it was open. In we tip-toed as scared as any two five year olds would be. Inside it was dark, cold, and smelt of old books and incense.
We waited. Not saying a word. Every now and then something would creek. The night sky cast an eerie light over the pews as it slanted in through the narrow windows. We could just barely see the rows of pews in front of us when suddenly the church clock bonged out the quarter hour (quarter past 11) and nearly frightened us to death. We regained our composure and continued our silent wait. At last the clock in the church tower bonged out midnight, and the church fell silent. We were about a dozen rows behind where the ghost should appear. We watched and waited, our breathing short and expectant. Then a pale misty light rose from the third row pew which looked like pipe smoke. It formed into the shape of a man with drooping shoulders and longish hair. We stopped breathing, then suddenly this strange, white, smoky looking apparition turned and looked at us. We didn’t wait to see his face we just took off for the back door and fled. Outside in the lane we gasped and gathered our breath. Then we started laughing. We’d seen our ‘holy ghost.’!!
THE MAN FROM NEXT DOOR, by Brad St.John. (February's Ghost Story.
When my mother died I was fortunate enough to inherit her nice two-up two-down terraced house. She’d been poorly for years but insisted on staying there until they ‘take me away in a box.’ Sadly they did, she having died in her sleep at the ripe old age of 89. Mind you I was 60 at the time, not married anymore, and about to retire from my job with the Post Office. I had had my own place but that was carved up between me and the wife after she took off to ‘be herself and find satisfaction’ at the advanced age of 58. That was about a year ago. I’ve been living in a rented semi for this last year, but decided on my mum’s death to move into her place and look around for a companion, not bent on ‘finding herself.
On one side was a couple who originally came from the West Indies, being quite friendly but holding a lot of parties. They loved to barbecue and play that tin drum music, so when they started I’d take mum to the seaside or somewhere for the day on a coach trip. I still love those day outs on a coach. The other side was empty, and had been for over a year. Or so I thought. It certainly had no curtains up when I moved in, and I saw no lights on at night, or never saw anyone coming and going. Until one night. It was after 9 pm and I’d just started to watch a good old 1960’s movie on the BBC. There was a knocking on the front door. Who the hell can that be at that time on a wednesday night. I opened the door, and here’s this old gent looking like death warmed up! An old grey face with big watery eyes, a wet sagging mouth, and all clothed in what looked like black rags even the Salvation Army wouldn’t accept. ‘I’m from next door,’ he said hardly lifting his head or eyes up. ‘You wouldn’t have a pump would you, my basement is flooded,’ he asked. I thought awhile, knowing we’d had no rain to speak of all month, then I asked if he had had some burst pipes. ‘No,’ he replied, then turned and walked out through the front gate. Odd I thought. What a weird man. I’ll go next door tomorrow and see how he made out.
Next morning, as I left for work I went next door and hammered on his front door. There was no answer. I looked through the curtainless window, and saw the inside was empty. On my way home I did the same, and again no answer. After dark that evening, around 9 pm again there was this knock on the door. It was him, the chap from next door. ‘Did you get it fixed?" I asked, before he said anything. ‘Get what fixed?’ he asked. ‘Your flooding, or whatever.’ He just looked at me with his huge, watery eyes. ‘Do you keep rabbits,’ he asked. ‘No’ I replied, puzzled. He turned and left. This time I watched him go in through his front door. I expected lights to go on, but his place remained dark.
Next morning, as I left for work, a van pulled up with a crew of workers from our local council. They went into the old man’s house. ‘Problem?’ I asked. ‘Not really. You live here? Well you’ve got new neighbours. Family from Bolton, moving in month end.’ ‘But someone lives here, don’t they?’ ‘Been empty a year now,’ he replied, ‘oh, except for the ghost of an old man,’ he said with a laugh. ‘You must of seen him.?’
JANUARY'S GHOST STORY: 'SPLIT PERSONALITY.'
I’ll try and explain the series of events that took place back in the 1960’s when I was living in London. It never made sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now. But I’ve never been able to forget this strange period in my life, and wonder if such events have ever happened to other readers and they can throw some light on what happened. It began when I started dating an Irish girl named Maura. She was 18, right out of Ireland, and was working in a big store on Oxford Street. We met on the tube most days and eventually I asked her out on a date. We went to the pictures. After about three months it got very serious, and we got engaged, to the consternation of her parents back in Ireland. ‘An English boy you say,’ came the letters, in big, bold, handwriting. ‘You’ll get rid of him, now.’ She was very upset as to how they felt so we decided to take the ferry over to Dublin and meet them.
Not a good move! He called me the ‘queer’ fellow, and told me that being English and not being catholic were two counts too many against me ever marrying his daughter. Maura was very hurt, and I did give her the right to call off our engagement if it meant keeping her parents respect. She asked to stay with them a few more days and asked me to return to London. We didn’t share a flat but we had planned that she move in with me after the meeting with her parents. I left for London by ferry and told her to call me at the flat I had in an old terraced house in Westbourne Grove. There was a hall phone and the landlady took messages for us if we were away.
As I left the ferry at Fishguard late in the afternoon on a bright summer day I saw Maura leaning against a wall near the shed you pass through to exit for the trains. I ran over to her. ‘How did you get here?’ I asked. She seemed very quiet, and all she wanted to do was hold my arm tightly, and ‘go home’ as she put it. On the train to London she said little about her parents, and in spite of all my pleas to know how she got to Holyhead before me, she kept saying,’ it doesn’t matter, just take me home.’ So I did. That night she stayed at my flat (I crept her in quietly like most of the lads did with their lady friends!) and the next day we found a flat we could both share, and I helped her move her few belongings over to the new place. She continued to be very quiet, but was very loving, and made it clear she wanted to be with me more than anything.
The months went by, and although we got along well, both doing a full days job, there was something missing. She seemed distant most of the time. Not so talkative, but always very loving. Then one day she left a note saying she had to visit her parents as her mother was ill. I came home and she was gone. She said she’d call. The following evening she called from Dublin, again to a phone in the hall. We only spoke a short while. After the call I went to my local pub for a drink. I met some friends there. One said, ‘I saw Maura earlier but she acted like she didin’t know me.’ I asked where he saw her and he replied outside the tube station, as if she was waiting for someone.
I couldn’t call Maura, her parents didn’t have a phone. Maura used a phone box. But I was puzzled. The next day I got a letter from her postmaked Dublin. She was staying until her mother got better. That night, as I left the pub I saw Maura outside the tube station. I ran over to her - and she just disappeared. I went over to Dublin and found her at her mothers side. She hadn’t left.
A SOBERING WALK HOME
It was the annual Christmas dance held every year at the old village hall in Otley. As usual the hall was packed, mostly with young farming lads like myself, there always being a shortage of young ladies. Most of us lads gathered in groups and tackled the home made ‘scrumpy’ which is the locally made cider. Huge barrels sat on their sides with a tap placed at the end, and us lads were continually filling our large pint mugs. It was good stuff. Thick, almost chewy, dark in colour, and rich in flavour. After three pints you found all the courage you needed to ask a girl to dance, even if most of us had no idea how to dance. After four or five pints some of the lads were dancing a jig with each other. There was much coming and going twixt the hall and the gents, as well as long stays outside the hall to take in some needed fresh air!
This particular Christmas dance I had not been lucky enough to snare the affections of any of the fairer sex, and had taken to drinking a lot more scrumpy than I should. I found myself outside being walked around the car park by two friends, telling me not to worry the scrumpy wears off if you keep walking! And I did. They left me there alone and I decided to wend my way home. It was late, the dance was winding down, and some of the luckier lads were already leaving with ladies on their arms. I decided therefore to set off home, which was only a few miles away just outside the village of Clopton. It was dark. It was after midnight, but it was dry, if a touch cold.
Soon the strains of the music died away behind me and I was in the darkness with only my footsteps as company, and a light wind blowing through the black hedges and among the tall leafless trees. I was humming a tune to myself, taking great gulps of the cold air, when I heard foorsteps behind me. ‘Hold up there lad’ a voice called out. ‘You mind if I walk a bit with you. Seems we might be going the same way.’ A man in his later years came up alongside me, looking frozen stiff, with an ashen face that seemed to hide beneath a large hat. ‘I’m Bill Hampton,’ he said. I introduced myself, and the two of us continued on our way.
He didn’t say a lot, other than mentioning the dance and how good the scrumpy was. I had to agree with him, although I don’t remember him being there. He talked about the good harvest there’d been, although in my estimation and all my farming friends opinions, it had been a terrible year. He talked about the foot & mouth - but there hadn’t been any for years. I had the distinct feeling he was from some area of Suffolk where things had been different. We reached the turning that led off to Charsfield and that’s where he said goodbye and left.
Soon I was home and glad to see a glow in the fireplace. I stoked it up, made a cup of tea, and was joined by my father who was having a sleepless night again. I told him I had met a Bill Hampton on my walk home. ‘A grey-faced wizened old chap,’ he asked. I replied ‘thats him.’ ‘Old Bill been dead thirty years now. His ghost still wanders these lanes at night eh? Never mind, he means no harm.’
The Room With A View.
It was our first holiday back in England in 17 years. We’d planned this trip for several years, saved several thousands of dollars, and prepared ourselves for all the inevitables, like rain, the high cost of most things, crowded roads, small but friendly B & B’s, big brekkies, and fish & chips covered in brown vinegar & salt. Mmmmm. But we hadn’t figured on a ghost. A huge, gigantic, ghost.
Our plan was to visit friends, and the last few remaining members of both our families, yet not staying too long anywhere (you can talk yourself all out in two days, even after 17 years away!) because we wanted to be ‘tourists.’ There’s a lot of Britain we’d never seen, and we planned to visit all those places we had read about whilst living our new life in Australia. So off we went. Through most of Wales, up through the Lake District, down through Shropshire, and south into Devon and Cornwall. It was in Cornwall, near a village named Philleigh, being not far from Falmouth, that we stopped at an old two storey Tudor style house, that advertised ‘care & comfort’ B & B, and knocked at the front door. No one came. A few more knocks and still no sign of anyone. We were walking back along the path when the door opened and a voice said, ‘can I help you.’ After a few inquiries we were welcomed in, shown a room upstairs that overlooked a field, and offered tea and scones. It seemed pleasant enough, although more business like than all ‘care & comfort.’
We were tired. It was late afternoon, so we took our tea then rested upstairs by stretching out on the double bed. We slept perhaps about an hour. It was still light and early evening (being late June) and we were hungry. As we both washed and refreshed ourselves, I looked out the window, across the field, and saw this huge old house. It was in the distance about half a mile, but it was quite derelict, all of three levels high, where in nearly every window there was someone sort of waving from the inside. We thought little of it, and drove off to Falmouth for supper.
That evening before getting into bed I looked out and saw the house, its windows dimly lit as if by candles. It gave me a shudder for some reason. In the morning after a restless nights sleep, I looked out - but did not see the building. I rubbed my eyes. I asked my wife; who had got up before me, if she had looked out and seen the building. She said she had not bothered to look for it. Was it just me I thought. Was I seeing things. She told me that maybe I was. But she had seen it the day before.
At breakfast I asked the prim and proper owner of the B & B about the building, and she seemed uninterested. ‘You know,’ I reiterated, ‘the old house on the other side of the field.’ ‘There’s no house across that way,’ she said. ‘Directly across the field from our window,’ I replied with more emphasis. ‘There were,’ she said in a mumble, ‘long time ago. A sort of institution for the sick. TB I think. People just went there and died. But they pulled that down before the last war.’ ‘Well I saw it,’ I replied. ‘Oh I doubts that’, she replied.
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