Read an Excerpt
Ghost-Hunter's Casebook
The Investigations of Andrew Green Revisited
By Bowen Pearse The History Press
Copyright © 2011 Bowen Pearse
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7412-0
CHAPTER 1
Bedfordshire
CHICKSANDS PRIORY
A walled-up nun and other free spirits
To see this fine and ancient building on a bright summer's morning, it is hard to imagine the blood-stained goings-on that have taken place within its walls and the ghosts that have walked its corridors.
The history of Chicksands Priory goes back a long way. The priory was founded by Payne de Beauchamp and his wife, the Countess Rohese, between 1147 and 1153. The countess's first husband was Geoffrey de Maudeville, first Earl of Essex and founder of Walden Abbey.
After Geoffrey's death in 1144 and his widow's remarriage, she turned her attention to Cudessand, the original name for the area in the eleventh century. The priory was well endowed, being the third largest religious house of the Gilbertine order in England. It was one of the nine two-cloistered establishments that accommodated canons, nuns, lay brothers and lay sisters. At one time, it may well have housed over 200 people.
In March 1536 the suppression of small monasteries under Henry VIII began. Two years later, in October 1538, accepting their fate, all in the priory surrendered the building. These included John Orrey, sub-prior of Chicksands, six canons and seventeen nuns and Margaret Burton, the prioress. They were all pensioned off.
New owners followed in quick succession – Richard Snowe in 1540, Sir Peter Osborne in 1587 and his descendents until Sir Algernon Osborn (seventh baronet), who died in 1948, having sold the estate to the Crown in 1936. Three years later, at the beginning of the Second World War, the Crown Commissioners gave the use of Chicksands to the Royal Navy and after a lapse of only nine months the RAF took over the tenancy. In November 1950 they were joined by the United States Air Force personnel who remained there until 1955.
There are numerous legends about the priory, the most well known being that of the disgraced nun whose affair with a canon resulted in the girl's pregnancy. The punishment was death – a quick end for the man, less so for the nun. She was partially walled up to her neck, enabling her to witness the execution of her lover. She was then completely walled up and allowed to die. It is said that on the seventeenth of every month, the ghost of the nun walks about the priory searching in vain for her lost lover.
The nun is commemorated on a plaque over one of the windows in the eastern wall of the remaining cloister and is named as Rosata: 'By virtues guarded and by manners graced, here alas is the fair Rosata placed.' Experts, however, claim that the plaque is an eighteenth-century invention. No medieval use of this Christian name has been found.
Quite aside from Rosata, there is evidence of further goings-on at what should have been a place of total abstinence. In 1535, Dr Richard Layton wrote to Thomas Cromwell saying that on visiting the priory he discovered 'two of the said nuunnes [sic] not baron,' one of them having been impregnated by a serving man, the other by a superior.
There are numerous accounts of long-ago walled-up nuns left to die but recent research carried out by author Alan Murdie puts the kibosh on the whole idea. During the medieval period nuns were occasionally walled up but apparently at their own request. It was a matter of total retreat and extreme religious zeal. But once walled up, her head was free so she could be fed and watered. (I must ask Alan how they managed with the loo.)
There are also stories of these nuns becoming ghosts though the evidence is very sketchy. But there have been other ghosts at Chicksands, right up to the present day. There is even a story of a man scared to death by the appearance of a ghost – but no details have been found. In the 1960s, a figure of a woman dressed in black was seen disappearing through a wall in the picture gallery adjoining King James's room. The apparition had long hair covering most of its features – not exactly the appearance of a nun.
Back in January 1915, one of the female staff said she saw a 'fascinating woman dressed in white glide past me. I heard the rustle of her dress and saw the long white train as she moved past.' The time was around 10 p.m.
In August 1954, a spine-tingling apparition appeared before a flight lieutenant. On coming off duty at ten at night, he went to his room to read but fell asleep. He awoke at around 3.45 a.m. and again decided to read for a while and switched on the light. He recalled with horror what he saw – 'there at the side of my bed was a woman with a ruddy face and untidy hair wearing a dark dress with a white lace collar. She appeared to be holding a notepad. She moved to the foot of my bed and vanished.'
Three years later, in March 1957, another officer recalled what he had seen in the picture-gallery. 'It was a motionless head and shoulders of a middle-aged woman dressed in what we associate as a nun's head-dress. She was looking past me with an expression of serious thought.' In another experience, an American officer said he had felt an amorphous pair of hands wrapped around his ankles.
The priory itself was magnificently restored by the Ministry of Defence in 1997–98. It is open to the public strictly by appointment, on the first and third Sunday afternoons of the month, April to October. The number to ring is 01525 860497.
CHICKSANDS PRIORY SHEFFORD, BEDFORDSHIRE
ENTRY STRICTLY BY APPOINTMENT, SEE ABOVE
WOBURN ABBEY
The stately ghosts of Woburn
Woburn Abbey, the magnificent home of the Dukes of Bedford for some 400 years, houses one of the world's most important art collections. The abbey also provides a refuge for ghost after ghost, continuing up to the present day. The latest apparition, appearing over the last couple of years, managed to frighten three visitors in the public area of the vaults. According to the duke, the ghost simply 'appeared and disappeared before them'. The very presence of ghosts certainly makes Woburn more interesting, but the staff are also eager not to put people off coming. So the report to me, following the latest sighting, contained this reassurance: none of the three visitors found the appearance of an apparition materialising and dematerialising in front of them 'at all upsetting'.
But the bloody hand of history has also left its mark. One of the more recent hauntings concerned a very unfortunate black manservant, to the third Duke of Bedford. Burglars broke into the mansion in a a daylight raid. They found the servant, whom we shall call Charlie, and beat him, threatening to continue the violence until he showed them the whereabouts of more treasure. He loyally refused to tell them a thing, so they strung him up to the point of near strangulation. Still refusing to talk, they then locked him in a cupboard in the Masquerade Room while they plundered the house and collected their loot.
The poor servant was by now in a pretty poor state but they had not finished with him yet. They first threw him out of the window, which nearly killed him. They then made sure of his death by throwing the poor bloke into the lake and drowning him. His ghost, whose actions began in the 1960s – has been known to open and close doors, just as a good servant should. Witnesses have claimed that he opens a door at one end of the room as if someone were walking in. The ghost allows that person time to cross the room until – you hear the footsteps – he opens the door at the other side.
To everyone's chagrin, Charlie's spirit tried this in the television room. It was similar to the above. According to the duke, 'we'd be sitting there when suddenly the handle of the door at one end of the room would turn and the door would open just as though an invisible person was coming through.' Steps were taken to stop the ghost's behaviour. The doors were constantly locked and unlocked. Finally, fed up with the draughts – in an act of desperation – the locks were changed. (You might as well try to stop a cyclone with a broad sword.) Charlie's actions continued.
The duke suggested a structural alteration might just solve the problems. Rooms were remodelled so that Charlie's haunting ground became a corridor. But Charlie has continued to haunt other parts of the mansion. The duke and duchess would be sitting comfortably in another room when they suffered an 'uncomfortable' feeling. They wouldn't put it stronger than that. Then, as if it had just come from the lake, a watery hand touched their faces.
But the door openings and closings didn't stop with the television room. Andrew writes that in conversation with Her Grace, the previous Duchess of Bedford, she explained how house guests became perturbed when their (three) bedroom doors opened of their own accord. They had had to get out of bed several times during the night to close them. They were apparently unaware of Woburn's ghosts and their little tricks. (Had nobody told them what to expect?)
The abbey hasn't always been a happy place. In their private apartments, the duke and duchess have found a restless, uncomfortable atmosphere that they find hard to describe. Tom Corbett, a clairvoyant, once visited the abbey and he found the top floor rooms in particular, 'soaked in unhappiness over many lifetimes, leaving an overpowering atmosphere of misery, strong enough to affect people.' There is a 'malaise' about the Wood Library and the duke's office.
The duke also felt the presence of his late grandmother, 'The Flying Duchess', in the isolated little summer house on the west side of the park and flitting around the gardens. This is the phantom of Lady Mary Tribe, who married the eleventh duke and so came to live at Woburn.
Lady Mary was an adventurous woman who, in the 1920s, became involved in the then glamorous business of flying. She was the first woman to fly to South Africa, visiting many British colonial settlements on the way. She made great efforts to encourage other women to take up flying, both as a career move and in sport. She lost her life in 1937, flying off the coast of East Anglia. Her gentle spirit entered the grounds of Woburn soon afterwards.
The first stirrings of the Woburn story must begin sometime before AD 969 when there was a Saxon hamlet by that name, the word's derivation being 'w', meaning crooked, and 'burn', a small stream. But the most significant date is probably 1145, when Cistercian monks from Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire under Hugh de Bolebec founded an abbey at Woburn.
In 1538, on the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the abbot of Woburn, Robert Hobbes, was executed for treason, after speaking out about Henry VIII's annulment of his first marriage and remarriage to Anne Boleyn. The story, carried over the centuries, was that the abbot and two of his clerics were executed and left hanging from the branch of an oak tree near the south front of the house. And beneath where their bodies once dangled, not a blade of grass nor a flower will grow. Along with so many others across the country, the abbey was dissolved in 1538.
The present mansion was begun on the site in 1744 by the fourth Duke of Bedford and it is this man, John Russell, who filled the house with the amazing art collection that people queue to see today.
With this background, it is not surprising that some of the ghosts at Woburn are monks. During a function in the fabulous Sculpture Room in March 1971, guests saw a figure in a brown habit by the entrance pillars which rapidly disappeared through a doorway. The monks must have been a lecherous lot, for all their holy habits, as women have complained of being groped by invisible hands.
An identical ghost dressed in a monk's habit was seen in the crypt, believed to be the ghost of Robert Hobbes, the abbot who was hanged due to his opposition to Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn. The thirteenth duke, John, says that the phantom was dressed in pale grey. If brown, it couldn't be the abbot – as claimed – since Cistercian monks wear white. Lay brothers wore brown but with a black garment over it. The crypt is out of bounds to the general public.
Thus are the ghosts of Woburn Abbey, yesterday, today, and tomorrow – who knows, they keep coming. Take a good look round when you come to visit. You never know what/whom you may find.
WOBURN ABBEY WOBURN, BEDFORDSHIRE, TEL: 01525 290666.
OPEN AT THE APPROPRIATE HOURS.
CHAPTER 2
Berkshire
LITTLECOTE HOUSE
Wild Will's hideous murder
Littlecote House, a beautiful Tudor mansion dating from around 1490 and now a hotel, boasts a number of ghosts, ancient and modern. The earliest of these date from Elizabethan times and owe their grisly origins mainly to the behaviour of 'Wild Will', the black sheep of the wealthy Darrell family, who then owned the mansion.
Imagine the pain, the joy and the great risk of death surrounding a birth in fifteenth century England. See the mother exhausted and happy with her new-born, the midwife hot and sweaty from her hard work and carrying the infant securely in her arms. Then see Wild Will appear, angry and cruel. He speaks to the midwife, determined that his orders be carried out. 'Throw the little bastard onto the fire,' he barks. She hesitates, refuses, pleads, holds the wee baby more tightly. But Will will not be defied. He tears the baby from the midwife's arms. He tosses the small bundle onto the centre of the fire in the grate, holding it down with his well polished boot until the infant had been consumed by the flames.
Somehow, Will is acquitted of the murder, probably through family connections. But nobody is sure who the baby was. There are several theories. But most are sure that the child was Will's – born to one of his several mistresses, possibly even his own sister.
Since then – from time to time up to the present day – the ghost of the tragic, unidentified, fair-haired mother has been seen, carrying a light. Someone witnessed the apparition of the midwife – Mrs Barnes of Sheffield – carrying the baby in her arms. Whoever the ghost was, it took its revenge. Shortly after the murder, they say the ghost of the child is supposed to have appeared to Wild Will when he was out riding in the park. The horse shied to such an extent that Will was thrown from the saddle and broke his neck. The exact spot where he died, Darrell's Stile, still frightens horses.
But Will's death in no way ended the story. The ghost still haunts the room where the child was roasted alive. There have been a number of sightings. In 1927 the apparition of the mother was seen by Sir Edward Wills, elder brother of previous owners, the Wills, the wealthy tobacco family; and again, more recently, by the staff of the new owners, Bourne Leisure/Warner Breaks.
But other modern ghosts still lie in wait for the unwary, not all reported in Andrew's time. In updating this entry, I spoke to Deborah Wood, the hotel's marketing manager; she told me a strange story, related to her by a guest who came there on holiday in 2005. This guest, whom we shall call Anne, had heard the story from her great aunt about the ghostly red bloodstains on the wooden floor in front of the fireplace in the haunted bedroom. Apparently, the bloodstains appeared during the winter and nothing but nothing could remove them. Something more drastic was called for. Anne's grandfather, a carpenter, was summoned to replace the wooden flooring on which the stains appeared. Drastic though it was, it seemed to be the only way the house could be rid of the bloodstains and their ghastly associations.
In recent times, first a journalist, then several television crews, have come looking for ghosts. (But, as Andrew said to me many times, no ghost will ever appear if you lie in wait for it). A Meridian Television crew paid a visit at Halloween, 2003 – loaded up with a lot of electrical ghost-testing apparatus. The crew bravely set up their equipment in the haunted bedroom and settled down to wait for something to happen, something to capture on film. But according to Deborah, they ran away in the early hours of the following morning. The lone journalist who had come on an earlier date did the same. It seems that this has now become almost standard behaviour for anyone trying to sleep in the haunted bedroom – running scared late at night.
There are now nine new luxury suites in the old manor house, and one of these has a ghostly story to tell. A guest left his room with all his things tidily put away in the cupboard and then went down to dinner. He returned to his suite to find his tidily arranged belongings scattered to the four winds – common evidence of poltergeist activity. No other poltergeist experiences were reported to me.
Andrew once said that children were the most susceptible to paranormal behaviour and Deborah had a story about youngsters in the hotel. Littlecote House has for some time employed house-guides who do everything to make guests happy. In 1993 a guide brought a party of children to the chapel; one little boy called out in fright: 'what's that arm doing there?' The guide looked in the direction where the lad was pointing – and there, sure enough, for all to see, was an unattached arm with a hand on the end of it, walking along the tops of the pews. Two weeks later, the guide saw the same arm again. Nobody had any explanation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ghost-Hunter's Casebook by Bowen Pearse. Copyright © 2011 Bowen Pearse. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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