Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
HAUNTED SPOTS.
The Willington Ghost—Maiden’s Castle—Kirkstall Abbey—The Sexhow Farmer and Old Nannie—Mines Haunted—The Old Lady of Littledean—The Bowbrig Ladies—Apparition in Fifeshire—Haunted Spots in Durham—In Yorkshire—Sir Walter Calverley—Dalton Hill Head—Haunted Houses—Appearance at Ripon—Canon Humble’s Narration—Madame Gould—Devon Legends—Sussex Ghosts.
HE universal voice of mankind has ever pointed out certain places as the borderland between the material and the spiritual world—has, truly or falsely, indicated deserted houses, marshy wastes, lonely roads, spots where enormous crimes have been perpetrated, and so forth, as haunted. In general, places which once were closely connected with man, but are now deserted by him, are thus distinguished in the popular mind, rather than those which have always been barren and desolate. It is natural then that with a past rich in historic incidents of the wildest kind haunted spots should abound in the North. Time would fail me to count them, nor could I by isolated instances give my readers a notion of the extent to which my native county is crowded by these shadowy beings. Almost every ancient barn, every cross road, every county mansion, is or has been haunted. Not many years back our squirearchy would have evinced some sense of shame had not every old family its ancestral ghost, nay, many of our yeomen claimed the same distinction.
Thus we have one haunted house at Willington Dene, another at North Shields, and a third at Chester-le-Street; Crook Hall, near Durham, has its “White Ladie,” South Biddick Hall its shadowy tenant Madam Lambton, and Netherby Hall a rustling lady who walks along a retired passage in that mansion, her dress rustling as she moves on. But the Willington ghost is perhaps the most remarkable among them, and I am disposed to give its history somewhat at length. It attracted much notice at the time, hundreds of people crowding day after day to visit the place of its appearance. And a good deal of information respecting it has been kindly supplied to me by a son of the owner of the property, who permits me to state that he corroborates the following facts, his family being at the time they lived in the haunted house too young to perceive the supernatural character of what they saw and heard.
The steam corn-mill at Willington with its adjacent dwelling-house were built A.D. 1800. In 1806 the premises were purchased by Messrs. Unthank and Procter, the latter gentleman being father to the present owner; and in 1831 Mr. Joseph Procter, the present owner, a member of the Society of Friends, went to reside in the house with his wife. It was not till three years after this that they began to be molested by what is popularly called the Willington Ghost. I may observe at the outset that the house and mill are detached and that there is no cellaring under the former. Both stand on a little promontory bordered on three sides by a watercourse in full view of the Willington viaduct on the Newcastle and Tynemouth Railway.
The first annoyance was from strange and unaccountable sounds. When the servants went in the evening to fasten the garden gate they heard footsteps behind them, but could see no one. Then the master used to hear a noise as of something heavy descending from the roof and falling through floor after floor, with a heavy thump upon each till it reached the bottom of the house. Again there would be a commotion in the kitchen, as if the things in it were moved and thrown about, but on going down stairs the master would be relieved on finding it was “only the ghost,” as the disturber of their peace began to be familiarly called.
One night the peculiar creak and squeaking of a certain water-cart was heard by Thomas Mann, the foreman at the mill, so that he felt sure it was being dragged out of the yard, but on following the noise he saw nothing, and when he returned to the yard the water-cart was standing in its usual place. Again, one day when Mrs. Procter called her nurse a voice answered her from the nursery in the tone too well known in the house, but the room was found to be empty and the woman out of doors. My informant also distinctly remembers, when a child, hearing what he thought to be his nurse moving about in the room, but on entering it no one was there, and the nurse not even in the house. All this reminds us of “Old Jeffrey,” the sprite which haunted Epworth Vicarage during the residence of the Wesley family, and who, like his brother of Willington, has never been satisfactorily accounted for.
On the 2nd of June, 1835, Mr. Joseph Procter detailed the several circumstances I have related to Mr. Parker, of Halifax, by letter, adding, “The disturbances came to our knowledge in the beginning of first month, but had existed some time previously. There were several credible witnesses to the apparition of a woman in her grave-clothes at four separate times outside the house.” Later in the same month, the family being from home, a gentleman from Sunderland, Edward Drury by name, asked and obtained leave to spend a night in the haunted house, which was then left in charge of an old servant. Mr. Drury seems to have had a good deal of curiosity on the subject, though he was sceptical as to anything supernatural in what had taken place. The history of the night is best given in his own words, merely premising that Mr. Procter returned home alone on account of business on the 3rd of July, the very day on which Mr. Drury and his companion, a medical man, arrived in the evening, also unexpectedly. After the house was locked up the two friends examined every corner of it minutely. The rooms on the third story were unfurnished, and the closet whence the apparition issued was too shallow to contain a person. Mr. Drury’s letter to Mr. Procter is as follows:—
Dear Sir, I hereby, according to promise in my last letter, forward you a true account of what I heard and saw at your house, in which I was led to pass the night from various rumours circulated by most respectable parties, particularly from an account by my esteemed friend Mr. Davison, whose name I mentioned to you in a former letter. Having received your sanction to visit your mysterious dwelling, I went on the 3rd of July, accompanied by a friend of mine, named T. Hudson. This was not according to promise, nor in accordance with my first intent, as I wrote you I would come alone, but I felt gratified at your kindness in not alluding to the liberty I had taken, as it ultimately proved for the best. I must here mention, that, not expecting you at home, I had in my pocket a brace of pistols, determining in my mind to let one of them drop, as if by accident, before the miller, for fear he should presume to play tricks upon me, but after my interview with you I felt there was no occasion for weapons, and did not load them, after you had allowed us to inspect as minutely as we pleased every portion of the house. I sat down on the third story landing, fully expecting to account for any noises I might hear in a most philosophical manner; this was about 11 o’clock p.m. About 10 minutes to 12 we both heard a noise, as if a number of people were pattering with their bare feet upon the floor; and yet so singular was the noise that I could not minutely determine from whence it proceeded. A few minutes afterwards we heard a noise as if some one was knocking with his knuckles among our feet; this was immediately followed by a hollow cough from the very room from which the apparition proceeded. The only noise after this was as if a person was rustling against the wall in coming up stairs. At. a quarter to one I told my friend that, feeling a little cold, I would like to go to bed, as we might hear the noises equally well there. He replied that he would not go to bed till daylight. I took up a note which I had accidentally dropped and began to read it; after which I took out my watch to ascertain the time, and found that it wanted ten minutes to one. In taking my eyes from the watch, they became rivetted upon a closet door, which I distinctly saw open, and also saw the figure of a female, attired in greyish garments, with the head inclined downwards, and one hand pressed upon the chest as if in pain, and the other, that is the right hand, extended towards the floor, with the index finger pointing downwards. It advanced with an apparently cautious step across the floor towards me; immediately as it approached my friend, who was slumbering, its right hand was extended toward him. I then rushed at it, giving at the time, as Mr. Procter states, a most awful yell, but instead of grasping it I fell upon my friend, and I recollected nothing distinctly for nearly three hours afterwards. I have since learnt that I was carried downstairs in an agony of fear and terror.
I hereby certify that the above account is strictly true and correct in every respect.
A brother of Mrs. Procter’s, Mr. Dodgson, was also molested. The following narration of his experiences, taken from Howett’s Journal, is attested by the family as perfectly correct. “One of Mrs. Procter’s brothers, a gentleman in middle life, and of a peculiarly sensible, sedate, and candid disposition, a person apparently most unlikely to be imposed upon by fictitious alarms or tricks, assured me that he himself had on a visit there been disturbed by the strangest noises, that he had resolved before going that if any such noises occurred he would speak and demand of the invisible actor who he was and why he came thither; but the occasion came, and he found himself unable to fulfil his intention.
“As he lay in bed one night he heard a heavy step ascend the stairs towards his room, and some one striking as it were with a thick stick the balusters as he went along. It came to his door, he essayed to call, but his voice died away in his throat. He then sprang from his bed, and opening the door found no one there, but now heard the same heavy steps deliberately descending (though perfectly invisible) the steps before his face, and accompanying the descent with the same loud blows on the balusters. He proceeded to the room of Mr. Procter, who he found had heard the sounds, and who also now arose, and with a light they made a speedy descent below, and a thorough search there, but without discovering anything that could account for the occurrence.”
Two sisters of this gentleman, visitors at Willington in the summer of ——, told of their bed being lifted up under them and shaken, and of its curtains being drawn up, after which they saw a female figure emerge from the wall, bend over them, and re-enter the wall. Their terror was great and they refused to sleep in that room again. One sister was moved to a distant part of the house, the other went to the foreman’s house, which was not far off. There she beheld another apparition outside the mill-house, which was also seen by Thomas Mann, the foreman, and his wife and daughter. Mr. Mann, a most respectable person, who had been long employed at the mill, saw it first, and called the others to view it.
The appearance it presented was that of a bare-headed man in a flowing robe like a surplice, who glided backwards and forwards about three feet from the floor, or level with the bottom of the second-story window, seeming to enter the wall on each side and thus present a side view in passing: it then stood still in the window, and a part of the body came through both the blind (which was close down) and the window, as its luminous body intercepted the view of the framework of the window. It was semi-transparent and as bright as a star, diffusing a radiance all around. As it grew more dim it assumed a blue tinge and gradually faded away from the head downwards. The foreman passed twice close to the house under the window, and also went to inform the family, but found the house locked up. There was no moonlight nor a ray of light visible anywhere about, and no person near. Had any magic lantern been used it could not possibly have escaped detection, and it is obvious that nothing of that kind could have been employed in the inside, as in that case the light could only have been thrown upon the blind, and not so as to interrupt the view both of the blind and window from without. The owner of the house slept in that room, and must have entered it shortly after the figure disappeared.
The lifting up of the bed at night as though by some one under it occurred several times. Investigations were made but to no purpose. On one occasion Mrs. Procter felt it when alone with her little infant and nurse. She told no one but her husband. The next night another person, who had not been told of it, felt the same thing and reported it to Mr. Procter privately. About this time Mrs. Procter was aware one night of a cold hand placed on her chest, though nothing was visible. She was greatly alarmed, and cannot think of it to this day without shuddering. A son of the family, then very young, repeatedly felt his bed raised under him and used to complain that a large dog got under his bed and lifted him up. All this time the constant pattering of little feet was kept up on the floor of the upper room. The servants were in constant terror of strange sights and sounds, and in consequence were often changed.
The family quitted the house altogether in 1847, but for some time previously the disturbances had become less frequent. They passed away altogether during the subsequent occupation of the premises by the clerk and foreman with their wives and children.
I would remind my readers that veracity is a characteristic quality of the Society of Friends, to which Mr. Procter and his family belonged, and will only add that Mr. Procter stated at the time that he could bring forty witnesses to attest the supernatural visitations which marked his residence at Willington.
There was a wild legend in my native city of a subterranean passage between Finchale Abbey and the cathedral of Durham, and of an attempt to penetrate it. One man succeeded up to a certain point where there was a strong door which barred progress. He returned scared by the horrors he had witnessed and refused to brave them again. Another, more desperate, declared he would succeed or perish in the attempt. He took with him a horn which he blew from time to time, so that those in the upper air might know of his whereabouts. The horn was heard at intervals till the crowd above reached Gilesgate Moor, when a shrill and hasty blast alarmed them—it was the last they could distinguish—the man had succumbed to the horrors of the place.
Respecting Cleveland, Mr. G. M. Tweddell says that every old castle and ruined monastery there has its legend of a subterranean passage leading therefrom, which some one has penetrated to a certain distance till he came to an iron chest supposed to be full of gold, on which was perched a raven. This raven points out, he considers, the Scandinavian origin of the legend. A cock or hen, however, sometimes takes the place of the raven.
I learn from Mr. Robinson, of Hill House, Reeth, Yorkshire, that in his neighbourhood as in many others is a place called Maiden’s Castle, in which tradition avers a chest of gold is buried. “Many attempts,” he says, “have been made to gain possession of the treasure, and one party of adventurers actually came up to the chest and laid hold of it, when a hen appeared, flapped her wings, and put out the light. This occurred three times, and the men were obliged to desist. The next day was Sunday, still they returned to the place. A violent storm of thunder and rain came on, however, and the ‘drift,’ in miners’ phrase, ‘ran.’ My informant, an old man of the place, knew this, he said, for a fact.”
A somewhat similar tale is told of Kirkstall Abbey, near Leeds. I give it in the genuine vernacular as it was told to my informant fifty years ago by the last survivor of the family of Ellis, who had lived for generations at a house now called the Abbey House, Kirkstall, but the proper name of which is the Bar Grange. “Th’ man war thrashing i th’ Abba lair, and at nooning a thocht he’d streckin his back, an when he gat out he saw a hoile under th’ Abba, an he crept in, and he fun an entry and he went doon it, and at bottom there was a gert house place. There were a gert fire blazing on t’ hart-stone, an in ae corner war tied up a fine black horse. And when it seed him it whinnied. An behind the horse was a gert black oak kist, and at top o’ t’ kist a gert black cock, an cock crawed. Th’man said to hissel ‘Brass in t’ kist, I’ll haesum on’t.’ An as he went up to’t, t’ horse whinnied higher and higher, and cock crawed louder and louder, an when he laid his hand on t’ kist t’ horse made such a din, an t’ cock crawed and flapped his wings, an summat fetched him such a flap on t’ side o’ his head as felled him flat, an he knowed nowt more till he came to hissel an he war lying on’t common in t’ lair, and never could he find the hoile under the Abba again.”
Mr. G. M. Tweddell thus relates the history of an apparition which with fitting retributive justice haunted a certain Yorkshire farmer.
An old woman of Sexhow, near Stokesley, appeared after her death to a farmer of the place, and informed him that, beneath a certain tree in his apple orchard, he would find a hoard of gold and silver which she had buried there. He was to take a spade and dig it up, keep the silver for his trouble, but give the gold to a niece of hers who was then living in great poverty, and whose place of abode she pointed out. At daybreak after his dream or vision, the farmer went to the spot indicated, dug and found the treasure, but kept it all to himself, though the sum allotted to him was considerable, and might have satisfied him. From that day, however, he never knew rest or happiness. Though a sober man before, he took to drinking, but all in vain—his conscience gave him no rest. Every night, at home or abroad, old Nanny’s ghost failed not to dog his steps, and reproach him with his faithlessness. At last, one Saturday evening, the neighbours heard him returning from Stokesley Market very late; his horse was galloping furiously, and as he left the high road to go into the lane which led to his own house he never stopped to open the gate at the entrance of the lane but cleared it with a bound. As he passed a neighbour’s house, its inmates heard him screaming out, “I will–I will—I will!” and looking out they saw a little old woman in black, with a large straw hat on her head, whom they recognised as old Nannie, seated behind the terrified man on the runaway nag, and clinging to him closely. The farmer’s hat was off, his hair stood on end, as he fled past them, uttering his fearful cry, “I will—I will—I will!” But when the horse reached the farm all was still, for the rider was a corpse!
Mines have ever been supposed to be haunted; nor can we wonder at it considering the many unearthly sounds constantly to be heard there—“the dripping of water down the shafts, the tunnelling of distant passages, the rumbling of trains from some freshly-explored lode,” and all received upon the ear in gloom and often in solitude. The following instance, told by a miner on his sick-bed to his clergyman, is recorded in Communications with the Unseen World (page 121): “The overseer of the mine he had been used to work in (at Whitehaven) for many years, was a Cumberland man; but being found guilty of some unfair proceedings he was dismissed by the proprietors from his post, though employed in an inferior situation. The new overseer was a Northumberland man, who had the burr that distinguishes that county very strongly. To this person the degraded overseer bore the strongest hatred, and was heard to say that some day he would be his ruin. He lived, however, in apparent friendship with him, but one day they were both destroyed together by the firedamp. It was believed in the mine that, preferring revenge to life, the ex-overseer had taken his successor, less acquainted than himself with the localities of the mine, into a place where he knew the firedamp to exist, and that without a safety-lamp; and had thus contrived his destruction. But ever after that time, in the place where the two men perished, their voices might be heard high in dispute, the Northumbrian burr being distinctly audible, and also the well-known pronunciation of the treacherous murderer.” Compare with this incident the following communication from the Rev. S. Baring-Gould: “I know a man who is haunted by two spectres. He has shaking fits, during which his eyes wander about the room; then he sees the ghosts. He was a miner, and is said to have half-cut through the rope when some men against whom he bore a grudge were going down the pit; the rope broke, and they were dashed to pieces. Their ghosts haunt him night and day, and he can never remain long in one house, or endure to be alone night or day.”
Mr. Wilkie relates a story somewhat similar to that given above from Cleveland, but with a happier termination. It runs as follows: “The ancient tower of Littledean, on the Tweedside, had long been haunted by the spirit of an old lady, once its mistress, who had been a covetous, grasping woman, and oppressive to the poor. Tradition averred that she had amassed a large sum of money by thrift or extortion, and now could not rest in her grave because of it. Still, in spite of its ghost, Littledean Tower was inhabited by a laird and his family, who found no fault with their place of abode, and were not much troubled by thoughts of the supernatural world. One Saturday evening, however, a servant-girl, who was cleaning shoes in the kitchen by herself, suddenly observed an elf-light shining on the floor. While she gazed on it, it disappeared, and in its place stood an old woman wrapped in a brown cloak, who muttered something about being cold, and asked to warm herself at the fire. The girl readily consented, and seeing that her visitor’s shoes were wet, and her toes peeping out blue and cold from their tips, she good-naturedly offered to dry and clean the shoes, and did so. The old lady, touched by this attention, confessed herself frankly to be the apparition that haunted the house. ‘My gold wud na let me rest,’ said she, ‘but I’ll tell ye where it lies; ’tis ’neath the lowest step o’ the Tower stairs. Take the laird there an’ tell him what I now tell ye; then dig up the treasure, and put it in his hands. An’ tell him to part it in two shares: one share let him keep, for he’s master here now; the other share he maun part again, and gie half to you, for ye are a kind lassie and a true, and half he maun gie to the poor o’ Maxton, the old folk and the fatherless bairns, and them that need it most. Do this and I sail rest in my grave, where I’ve no rested yet, and never will I trouble the house mair till the day o’ doom.’ The girl rubbed her eyes, looked again, and behold the old woman was gone!
“Next morning the young servant took her master to the spot which had been indicated to her, and told him what had taken place. The stone was removed, and the treasure discovered, and divided according to the instructions given. The laird, being blessed with a goodly family of sturdy lads and smiling maidens, found no difficulty in disposing of his share. The servant-girl, so richly endowed, found a good husband ere the year had passed. The poor of Maxton for the first time in their lives blessed the old lady of Littledean, and never was the ancient tower troubled again by ghost or apparition.”
The same locality supplies us with another legend. About half-a mile to the east of Maxton, a small rivulet runs across the turnpike-road, at a spot called Bow-brig-syke. Near this bridge lies a triangular field, in which, for nearly a century, it was averred that the forms of two ladies, dressed in white, might be seen pacing up and down. Night after night the people of the neighbourhood used to come and watch them, and curiosity brought many from a great distance. The figures were always to be seen at dusk; they walked arm-in-arm over precisely the same spot of ground till morning light. Mr. Wilkie adds, that, about twelve years before the time of his noting down the story, while some workmen were repairing the road, they took up the large flat stones upon which foot-passengers crossed the burn, and found beneath them the skeletons of two women lying side by side. After this discovery, the Bow-brig ladies were never again seen to walk in the Three-corner field.
Mr. Wilkie says further, that he received this account from a gentleman who saw and examined the skeletons, and who added that they were believed to be those of two ladies, sisters to a former laird of Littledean. Their brother is said to have killed them in a fit of passion, because they interfered to protect from ill-usage a young lady whom he had met at Bow-brig-syke. He placed their bodies upon the bridge, and lowered the flat stones upon them to prevent discovery. Some years later he met with his own death near the same fatal spot. While riding with his dogs he fell over the brae opposite to the bridge, and was found lying dead by the Tweedside. Tradition identifies him with the laird Harry Gilles, whose adventure in hunting has already been related.
The following narration was communicated to one of my clerical friends by a lady of Perth. One of her friends went to stay at a country house in Fifeshire, where she arrived just in time to dress for dinner, and was shown straight to her room. Her toilet completed, she was on her way downstairs, when something wrong in the lower part of her dress made her stoop down. As she looked up again she saw a lady richly dressed and very handsome emerge from a short staircase which had its exit on the principal landing, and move hastily towards the staircase she was descending. She stood aside and the form passed her without any acknowledgment of the courtesy. There was a cold sneer on her face which particularly attracted the visitor’s attention. She walked on, however, to the drawing-room, spoke to her host and hostess, and having been introduced to the rest of the party turned to look round for the beauty who had passed her on the stairs, but she was not there. Next morning she mentioned the circumstance to the lady of the house, but she turned off the subject with some trivial remark. However, during her stay the visitor was shown over the house, and among other rooms was taken into one at the top of the short staircase mentioned before. It was evidently disused, and a number of old family portraits were hanging on its walls. Among these there was one vacant place, and the picture that should have filled it was on the floor with its face to the wall. When the visitor noticed this her hostess said, “It is the portrait of one who brought disgrace upon the family. This used to be her room.” She turned the picture round, and the visitor started. It was the very form and face she had beheld on the staircase. She was then told it was by no means the first time the apparition had been seen, but she believed always by strangers, not by members of the family.
I believe that there is firm faith in ghosts, and their power of revisiting the earth, throughout the entire county of Durham; and it is thought that a Romish priest is the proper person to lay them. The great season for their appearance is St. Thomas’s eve and day, and they haunt the earth till Christmas eve, when the approaching festival, of course, puts them to flight. We of the North believe firmly in the benign influences of Christmas-tide as described by Shakespeare:—
Some say that ever gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrate,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
It was on one of the unlucky days (between St. Thomas’s and Christmas eve), which happened also to be a Friday, that one of the waits disappeared at the foot of Elvet Bridge, Durham, not to be seen again; since which event the waits have never played in that city on Friday nights. On St. Thomas’s eve and day, too, have carriers and waggoners been most alarmed by the ghost of the murdered woman, who was wont to haunt the path or lane between the Cradle Well and Neville’s Cross. With her child dangling at her side, she used to join parties coming in or going out of Durham in carriers’ carts or waggons, would enter the vehicles, and there seat herself; but would always disappear when they reached the limits of her hopeless pilgrimage.
Night after night, too, when it is sufficiently dark, the Headless Coach whirls along the rough approach to Langley Hall, near Durham, drawn by black and fiery steeds. We hear of this apparition, too, in Northumberland. “When the death-hearse, drawn by headless horses, and driven by a headless driver, is seen about midnight, proceeding rapidly, but without noise, towards the churchyard, the death of some considerable person in the parish is sure to happen at no distant period.”[1] And it is recorded in Bee’s Diary, that the death of one John Borrow, of Durham, was presaged by a vision of a coach drawn by six black swine, and driven by a black driver.
The Headless Coach, or more correctly coach with headless coachman, appears again in Norfolk. Mr. Henry Denny writes thus of it: “I remember well my mother talking about a certain person, whose name I have forgotten, but who formerly lived in what is called Pockthorp, a part of the city near the river Wensam, a man of some substance. He used to be seen by people late at night driving a coach and four horses over the tops of the houses, the coachman and horses all without heads. The crack of the whip was heard and then the carriage and horses were seen in the air. He was always seen going in the direction of Pockthorp, or the old bridge which leads to Monshold Heath. The belief was a common one fifty or sixty years ago.”
Beverley, in Yorkshire, has also a like apparition. The headless ghost of Sir Josceline Percy drives four headless horses nightly above its streets, pausing over a certain house, of which I can say nothing more by way of identification than that it was tenanted a few years back by a Mr. Gilbey. This house was said to contain a chest with 100 nails in it-, one of which dropped out every year. Tradition avers that this nocturnal disturbance is connected with Sir Josceline once riding on horseback into Beverley Minster. There is in the Minster a Percy shrine.[2]
“At Dalton, near Thirsk,” writes Mr. Baring-Gould, “is an old barn, which is haunted by a headless woman. One night a tramp went into it to sleep. At midnight he was awakened by a light, and sitting up he saw a woman coming towards him from the end of the barn, holding her head in her hands like a lantern, with light streaming out of the eyes, nostrils, and mouth. He sprang out of the barn in a fright, breaking a hole in the wall to escape. This hole I was shown six years ago. Whether the barn still stands I cannot say.”
As for Yorkshire, indeed, the Rev. J. Barmby assures me that there were plenty of ghosts or bogles about the village of Melsonby, a district with which he used to be well acquainted. A well there, called the Lady Well, was haunted by a lady without a head, and Berry Well by a bogle in the form of a white goose. Not far off was a conical hill, called Diddersley Hill, on Gatherley Moor, where an old farmer declares the fairies used to dance in his young days. And near this hill an arch spanned the road, not of any great antiquity, certainly; still a mounted horseman was to be seen upon it in the early morning light, to the great terror of the farmers’ lads who had to pass beneath, starting before dawn with carts for coals into “Bishoprig,” i. e. the county of Durham.
The village of Calverley, near Bradford, in Yorkshire, has been haunted since the time of Queen Elizabeth by the apparition of Master Walter Calverley, now popularly called Sir Walter. It is averred that this man murdered his wife and children, and, refusing to plead, was subjected to the “peine forte et dure.” In his last agony he is said to have exclaimed, “Them that love Sir Walter, loup on, loup on!” which accordingly became the watch-word of the apparition, which frequented a lane near the village of Calverley. There is no fear, however, of meeting it at present;the ghost has been laid, and cannot reappear as long as green holly grows on the manor. My friend, Mr. Barmby, however, informs me that his grandfather, when a child, and riding behind his father on horseback, saw the apparition, and was terrified by it; while the father, to allay his boy’s fears, said “It’s only Sir Walter.” This Master Walter Calverley is the hero of “The Yorkshire Tragedy,” one of the plays attributed by some to Shakespeare.
The late Canon Humble informed me that a house at Perth, let in tenements, was considered haunted on account of the strange and unaccountable sounds heard there. Sometimes music was heard, proceeding apparently from a fixed spot in the wall. It was always heard in the same place and the same time, i. e. between seven and eight in the evening and one and two in the early morning, but sometimes for a longer, sometimes for a shorter, period of time. Again, there were unaccountable rappings and knockings by unknown hands. The only thing alleged in explanation was, that a former proprietor and inhabitant of the house was a very wicked man.
From the Rev. J. F. Bigge I learn a few particulars respecting another haunted house—Dalton Hill Head, once belonging to the family of Hedley, of Newcastle, but purchased from them by Mr. Collingwood, of Dissington. Some years ago a woman, named Mary Henderson (a connection, it appears, of George Stephenson, the engineer), had sole charge of the house; but the gardener lived close by, and kept a mastiff, called “Ball.” Against the advice of the gardener, she pried into a hidden closet, and discovered in it a quantity of children’s bones, some in hat-boxes, some wrapped in articles of clothing. She begged for the dog as a companion through the night, closed the house, and went to bed, but was soon awakened by strange sounds of dancing and singing up stairs. Being a bold woman, she got up to investigate into the matter, but the dog was terrified, and unwilling to accompany her. She took him in her arms, and went round the house. All was still and empty, but an attic window stood open. We are not informed whether the disturbances continued after this investigation.
One of my clerical friends, an incumbent in Yorkshire, has been good enough to communicate to me a family legend of an apparition witnessed by one of his aunts, and often told by her. This lady used, when a girl, to visit at the house of a gentleman near Ripon, and on one occasion, when about thirteen or fourteen years old, was spending the afternoon there. She was playing in the garden with his children, young people of about her own age, when one of them exclaimed, “Why, there is brother —— walking at the bottom of the garden.” She looked up, and recognised the form and features of the young man, who was then in India. His figure appeared with perfect distinctness upon a gravel path which led round the garden, but not to any other place. One of the children, a young girl, ran into the house and told her father what they had seen. He bade her run away and go on playing—it must be a mistake. However, he took out his watch, noted the time, and wrote down the day and hour. When the next Indian mail arrived it brought intelligence of his son’s death, at the very time when the children had seen his “eidolon” in the garden.
A story of the same character and as remarkable was thus related to me by the late Canon Humble: “I do not recollect whether I told you a very curious circumstance which occurred to a man I knew very well named S——, then a curate of St. A——, Newcastle. He had, when in his previous curacy of L—— B——, been paying his addresses to a young lady who resided at F—— Hall, near B——, but a coolness had taken place between them. One summer evening he was riding in the neighbourhood and saw the lady standing at the end of the drive which led to her house, without her bonnet, and dressed in light blue muslin. He thought at once that she had seen him in the distance and come out to have a word of explanation, so he attempted to direct his steed towards her. The animal would not go, but snorted and turned away. He brought its head round, but it began to kick and plunge so violently as to endanger his seat. He could do nothing with it, and was obliged at last to follow its wishes instead of his own. The next morning, feeling that some explanation was due, he determined to go and tell the young lady how her dress had startled his horse and how impossible he had found it in consequence to approach her. On reaching F—— Hall he found it closed, and was informed that Miss M—— , the lady in question, had died the evening before, at the very time he had seen her form on the road.”
Through the kindness of the Rev. S. Baring-Gould I am enabled to conclude my series of apparitions and haunted houses with the account of one which, though from another part of England, is of such exceeding interest that I am much gratified with the permission to record it in these pages as I received it from his pen:—
“Lew Trenchard House is haunted by a White Lady, who goes by the name of Madame Gould, and is supposed to be the spirit of a lady who died there—like Queen Elizabeth, seated in her chair—April 10, 1795. Her maiden name was Belfield; she was born in 1711, and she married William Drake Gould, son of Henry Gould, of Lew Trenchard, and Elizabeth, daughter of Philip Drake of Littleham.
“At Lew House there is a corridor extending the whole length of the upper story of the house; along this the lady is supposed to walk at night, and her step has been frequently heard.
“My mother has often told me how she has heard the step at night, as though proceeding from high-heeled shoes, walking slowly up the corridor, and thinking it might be my father coming to bed she has opened the door to admit him; but on looking out she has seen the moon streaming in through the windows on an empty passage, down which she still heard the measured tread. My sister often expressed her desire to hear the steps of the spectral lady, but was still disappointed, though she sat up on purpose.
“One summer night, however, she was sitting in her room, with window and door open, writing a letter, and thinking of anything but the old Madame, when she heard steps along the corridor. At the moment she thought it might be my father, and she rose, took up her candle, and went to the door to speak to him. To her surprise she saw no one, but the steps passed her, and went on into the lumber-room at the end of the passage. Being a resolute and courageous young lady she followed the sound into the room, but could see no one. She also opened the only other door beyond her own, and which gave admittance to one of the servants’ rooms, to ascertain whether the noise could have proceeded thence, but she found the two maids fast asleep.
“At the end of the house is a long oak-tree avenue; the White Lady is said to have been seen pacing up and down this, gleaming in and out among the gnarled tree-trunks, as she passed into the moonlight or disappeared in the shade.
“About three miles off is a quaint old granite mansion, half pulled down by my grandfather, and turned into a substantial farmhouse. This ancient house belonged originally to the Woods, and there was a standing feud between that family and my own, till they were ruined, and Madame Gould bought the land and house from them; after which she declared she should die happy.
“On the confines of this property, called Orchard, is a deep gloomy valley, through which trickles a rill of dark water, under the shadow of the thick fir plantations which clothe the sides of the glen. It goes by the name of the Black Valley, and the Bratton-Clovelly road plunges down into it, crosses a little bridge, and scrambles up the opposite side through the gloom of the over-hanging trees. On the side of the road is an old mine-shaft, long abandoned. It is confidently asserted by Lew and Bratton people that, on dark nights, Madame Gould is to be seen, dressed all in white, standing by the side of the stream, with a phosphorescent light streaming from her face and her clothes; and that she stoops and takes up handfuls of water, which she allows to trickle down in sparkling drops through her fingers. Sometimes she combs her long brown floating hair with a silver comb; and many a Bratton man, returning from market, has seen her and been nearly frightened out of his wits. Not many years ago a man of that village had his leg broken by falling over a hedge, in his attempt to escape from the apparition as it issued from the old mining-shaft and made towards him.
“A young man, named Symmonds, living at Galford, a farm in the parish, left home for America during the old Madame’s lifetime. After some years he returned, and hiring a horse at Tavistock he rode home, a distance of twelve miles. It was a clear moonlight night, and as he passed through the Lew Valley, with the white rime lying thick on the grass, he noticed a newly-ploughed field, in which the plough had been left. On this was seated a lady in white satin, with long brown hair floating down her shoulders. Her face was uplifted, and her eyes directed towards the moon, so that Mr. Symmonds had a full view of it. He recognised her at once, and taking off his hat he called out, ‘I wish you a very good night, Madame.’ She bowed in return, and waved her hand, the man noticing the sparkle of her diamond rings as she did so. On reaching home, after the first greetings and congratulations, he said to his aged parents, ‘What do you think now? I have seen that strange Madame Gould sitting on a plough, this time o’ night, and with frost on the ground, looking at the moon.’ All who heard him started, and a blank expression passed over their countenances. The young man, seeing that he had surprised them more than he anticipated, asked what was the matter. The reply was, ‘Madame was buried three days ago in Lew church.’
“It must be noticed that a belief connected with the appearance of spirits, up to the third day after death or burial, is very ancient. S. Macarius the Younger, of Alexandria (A.D. 373), thus speaks: ‘On the third day, the oblation having been made in the church, the alleviation of its pain, which it underwent through separation from the body, the departed soul . . . . . receives good hope. For two days it was permitted to the soul to wander about on the earth at its will. Wherefore the soul, enthralled with love to its body, sometimes haunts the mansion wherein it had dwelt, sometimes the sepulchre in which its body is laid, and thus for two days it seeks, as it were, its part, in seeking its corpse.’
“But to return to the subject under consideration.
“An old woman once entered the orchard near Lew church, and seeing the trees laden with apples she shook some down and filled her pockets, keeping one in her hand to eat. She then turned to the gate into the road, but suddenly there flashed before her in the way the figure of the old Madame in white, pointing to the apple. The poor woman in an agony of terror cast it away, and fled across the orchard to a gap in the hedge on the opposite side; but at the moment she reached it the figure of the White Lady appeared standing in the gap, looking at her sternly, and pointing to her pocket. It was not till the old goody had emptied it of the stolen apples that the spectre vanished.
“Old Lew Trenchard church was handsomely furnished with a carved oak screen and bench-ends. Some of these ends alone remain. They are of excellent workmanship: one representing St. Michael weighing souls, one a lady’s portrait in a medallion, with a jester in cap and bells in a niche beneath it, another a gentleman’s portrait with an old battlemented gateway beneath it. The other bench-ends bear shields with the emblems of the Passion upon them. The screen has wholly disappeared.
“The carpenter who was employed in 1832 to replace these old benches with neat deal pews, before leaving his work one evening, out of curiosity, opened the vault in which lay William Drake Gould and his lady. Finding the lady’s coffin-lid loose, he proceeded to raise it, that he might take a look at the redoubted Madame. Immediately she opened her eyes, sat up, and rose to her feet. The carpenter, who was an elderly man, frightened out of his senses, rushed from the church, which was filled with light from the body of the risen lady. As the man dashed down the churchyard avenue he turned his head back, and saw her over his shoulder gleaming in the porch, and preparing to sail down the path after him.
“From the church to his house was a good mile and a quarter, and the road passes nearly all the way through woods. He ran as he never ran before, and as he ran his shadow went before him, cast by the light which shone from the spectral lady who followed him. On reaching his house he burst the door open, and dashed into bed beside his wife, who was infirm and bed-ridden. Both then saw the figure standing in the doorway, and the light from it was so intense that, to use the old woman’s words, she could see by it a pin lying on the floor.
“There is a stone shown on the ‘ramps’ of Lew Slate Quarry where seven parsons met to lay the old Madame. Opinions differ as to what took place—whether she was laid in part or not at all. Some say that the white owl, which nightly flits to and fro in front of Lew House, is the spirit of the lady conjured by the pardons into a bird; others doubt this; but I believe all agree that the parsons failed because one of the number was ‘a bit fresh’ when he came, and had forgotten the right words to be used.
“I have not the smallest doubt in my own mind that this history is in its essentials of very great antiquity; that the apparition is really an ancient white lady, who has suffered anthropomorphosis, and become Madame Gould; the same stories and the same superstitions having been rife ages before the birth of the lady to whom they have now been applied.
“In many points Madame Gould strongly resembles the German Dame Holle: such as her connection with water and her silver comb, as well as the appearance to the apple-picker. Holle or Holdar, in Germany, is a very beautiful white lady with long flowing hair of a golden hue; she haunts fountains and streams, and is often engaged in washing. She is well disposed, and rebukes bad children, punishing theft and other faults. Her dress is white with a golden girdle, and she is radiant with light. She is an ancient Teutonic goddess. Curiously enough, also, she lives in mountains, and issues luminous from the mouth of caves, just as Madame Gould appeared to the man from the old mine-shaft. In one account of the apparition which I obtained, Madame Gould was expressly said to have appeared with golden hair; whereas her portrait represents her as a very beautiful woman, with long brown hair floating down her back.
“I have given these stories of the old Madame with some fulness because I believe her to be unquestionably an ancient Saxon goddess, who has fallen from her pedestal, and undergone anthropomorphosis and localization; and such instances, though not uncommon in Norway or Germany, are rare in England.”
Devonshire is no doubt a land of ghost stories. I remember how racily some of them were told by the late Rev. William Woollcombe, an aged clergyman of that county with whose family my own is connected. One was of a young lady in North Devon, whose father had been carried off by smugglers, kept a prisoner for a “year and a day,” and only released on payment of a large sum of money. He did not long survive his restoration to his home, and his daughter, an only child and motherless, soon followed him to the grave, worn out by that year of loneliness and suspense. But she did not rest there; her spirit haunted the neighbouring town, a straggling fishing-place, whose inhabitants were supposed to be implicated in the abduction of her father. Her mode of punishing them was peculiar. She would flit from house to house on Sunday morning while the dinners were cooking, and, laying her cold hand on the meat, would taint it, so that it became absolutely uneatable. Another story, told to account for the peculiar shape of the dining-room in a certain Dartmoor vicarage, was to this effect:—
Some years back a clergyman, on taking possession of a living on the confines of Dartmoor, found it necessary to enlarge the house, which was really little better than the peasants’ cottages around it. He lengthened the one sitting-room, and made it into a tolerable dining-room, adding a drawing-room and two or three bedrooms. These improvements satisfied his wife and children; but there was one interested party whom he had left out of consideration—the spirit of his predecessor, an old gentleman who had outlived all his family, and passed many solitary years in the remote parsonage.
And ere long the consequences of this neglect appeared. Sounds were soon heard of an evening as though a figure in a dressing-gown were sweeping in and out of the rooms, and treading with a soft yet heavy tread, and this particularly in the dining-room, where the old Vicar had spent the last years of his life, sitting over the fire, or pacing up and down in his dressing-gown and slippers. The eerie sounds began at nightfall, and continued at intervals till morning. Uneasiness pervaded the household. Servants gave warning and went away; no one applied for their vacant places. The daughters fell ill, and were sent away for change of air; then their mother was anxious about them, and went to see how they were going on; and so the Vicar was left alone, at the mercy of his predecessor’s ghost. At first he bore up bravely, but one Saturday night, while he was sitting up late, and wearily going over his Sunday sermons, the “pad, pad” of the measured tread struck so painfully upon his nerves that he could bear it no longer. He started up, opened the window, jumped out, and made the best of his way to the nearest farm, where lived his churchwarden, an honest Dartmoor farmer.
There the Vicar found a kind welcome; and when he told his tale, in a hesitating sort of way, owning his dislike to solitude and apologising for the weakness of nerves which made him fancy he heard the sounds so often described to him, his host broke in with a declaration of his belief that the old Vicar was at the bottom of it, just because of the alterations in the house he had lived in so many years. “He never could abide changes,” pursued the farmer, “but he’s had his day, and you should have yours now. He must be laid, that’s certain; and, if you’ll go away next week to your missis and the young ladies, I’ll see to it.”
And see to it he did. A jury of seven parsons was convoked, and each sat for half-an-hour with a candle in his hand, and it burned out its time with each, showing plainly that none of them could lay the ghost. Nor was this any wonder, for were they not all old acquaintances of his, so that he knew all their tricks? The spirit could afford to defy them; it was not worth his while to blow their candles out. But the seventh parson was a stranger, and a scholar fresh from Oxford. In his hand the light went out at once. He was clearly the man to lay the ghost, and he did not shrink from his task; he laid it at once, and in a beer-barrel.
But now a fresh difficulty arose. What was to be done with the beer-barrel and its mysterious tenant? Where could it be placed secure from the touch of any curious hand, which might be tempted to broach the barrel, and set free the ghost? Nothing occurred to the assembled company but to roll the thing into one corner, and send for the mason to inclose it with stones and mortar. This done, the room looked very odd with one corner cut off. Uniformity would be attained if the other three were filled up as well; and besides, the ghost would be safer if no one knew the very spot in which he was reposing. So the other corners were blocked up, and with success. What matters it if the room be smaller!—the parsonage has never been haunted since.
I will only add one more story, which is well authenticated, at least as far as the laying of the ghost. About fifty years ago the beautiful avenue of C—— Place, Sussex, was haunted by the spirit of Madam S——. There was much excitement in the neighbourhood in consequence, and the vicar of the parish was applied to to lay the ghost. He with two of the neighbouring clergy met in C—— church at midnight, and used some form of prayer calculated to satisfy the popular mind, after which, it is said, she never appeared again. The names of the clergymen are still remembered in the neighbourhood.
Madam S. is said to have haunted the place in consequence of a threat she had uttered when objecting to the marriage of a daughter. The daughter married, and the mother haunted her. This laying of a ghost, however, is not always an easy task. Homersfield, in Suffolk, was a haunted house, and a priest was sent for to lay the unquiet spirit that so tormented the inmates. He came, book in hand, but to no purpose, for the instant he began to read a prayer the ghost got a line ahead of him. At last one of the family hit on this devise. The next time, as soon as the priest began his exorcism, two pigeons were let loose, the spirit stopped to look at them, the priest got before him in his prayer, and the work was accomplished—the ghost has never again been heard of.