Ghost Stories for a January Night

Mindful of my friend Annette's grandfather, who was married to a medium and swore it was all a load of bollocks until the day he walked slap-bang into his wife's Native American spirit guide by the newel post at the foot of the stairs, I keep an open mind on the various phenomena that get lumped together under the heading of ghosts. There's much still to learn about the passage of time and the nature of memory, and even more about death and where all that energy goes.  As it happens, I've been reading and writing a fair bit about graveyards and ghosts lately, and it made me realise that I hadn't actually documented my several possibly paranormal encounters over the years and could be in danger, as old age encroaches, of forgetting them. So here they are.

That some places have a particularly eerie atmosphere is beyond question. Mostly, though, that slightly shivery feeling doesn't stop me wandering around them quite happily. There is, however, something unspeakably bad in the ruins of Berry Pomeroy Castle near Paignton.  I know this, partly because of well-documented apparitions, but mainly because each time I've been there, I've felt it.  

And then there's Lidwell Chapel on Haldon Moor, also in Devon and the site of the first documented serial killings in the British Isles.  The first time I went there, I was so shaken I vowed never to return.  I've since been back twice, each time with friends who heard me say I was never going back and persuaded me otherwise.  Both visits were as chilling as before. It doesn't help that the eponymous well - or spring - turns the red earth to what looks like blood under your feet, or that both collies who have accompanied me - in their individual times - were decidedly reluctant to go inside the ruins - and let's face it, what collie doesn't like thickets, water and sticky, sticky mud? All told, I shudder just driving past on the B3192 and even sunlit photos of the beautiful surrounding countryside make me anxious.

Closer to home is somewhere I've been very often, namely, the Frome valley in Bristol. The area known as Snuff Mills is in quite a deep gorge - though on nothing like the scale of the celebrated Avon Gorge - and in winter, it's as if the darkness seeps up from the ground as the afternoons dwindle. There's something about the atmosphere here that makes me think of it as a place of ghosts. I grew up with the story of two children, June Sheasby (aged 7) and her brother, Royston (5), who left home to visit a horse that was grazing in Wickham Glen one summer day in 1957, and who never returned home. Their bodies were discovered twelve days later, when a police constable noticed a small hand poking out of the undergrowth. (We're told thousands of people joined in the search for the children, and you have to wonder how it took so long for their bodies to be found.)  Their murderer was never caught and brought to justice, and it's impossible to know whether that dark episode - especially alarming for an over-sensitive, pony-mad little girl growing up nearby just a few years later - coloured my impression of the place, but whatever the cause, it's somewhere that makes me shiver.

Another disturbing atmosphere caught me off-guard during my visit to Canterbury Cathedral in 2011.  Time was tight - I had to drive back to Maidstone to pick up my son and I'd lingered rather too long at the spot where an eternal flame burns in memory of the murdered Archbishop, Thomas Becket, so I wasn't surprised to feel anxious as I hurried, head down, towards the north-west transept.  Except that suddenly I was very very anxious, to the point where I could barely breathe; my mouth was dry, my heart was hammering and I looked up to see an altar with a sculpture of three fearsomely jagged swords above it.  This, I then realised, was the spot where the Archbishop's murder had happened, not the site of the flame which merely marks where his shrine stood before it was destroyed in 1538 on the orders of Henry VIII. But I'd felt the actual location and its atmosphere of murderous intent before I'd learnt its significance.  

Now let's head to Langford Budville in Somerset.  Back in 2009, my sceptical friend Cathy and I were whiling away a cold January afternoon visiting churches in the vicinity before going to a gig in the evening.  Around dusk we reached St Peter’s Church in the aforementioned village, and I did what I always do as soon as I step inside a parish church – namely, make for the table where the guide books are sold, as they often have curious stories in them. I never got there, however, as almost immediately I felt such a dark, malevolent presence somewhere up towards the altar that I had to get out, immediately. It wasn't just fear; I also felt a visceral disgust - whatever it was, there was something profoundly obscene about it. 

What was strange, however, was that as I reached the door, I saw my companion dashing towards me.  ‘There’s something evil in here,’ Cathy gasped. ‘Got to get out!’  This from a nurse with years of training in Being Sensible, who'd give me short shrift whenever she caught me watching ‘Most Haunted’.  In fact, the only creepy thing that ever happened to her – though this is seriously creepy – was when Fred and Rose West tried to abduct her from a bus stop in Stokes Croft in the early 70s.  Until we went to Langford Budville, that is.  

Upon our return, I did a bit of research to see if there were any ghost stories associated with the church but found none. I suspect that if this presence were a 'thing', it would have been abandoned long ago.  So what Cathy and I both experienced that day remains a mystery.

At Berry Pomeroy, Lidwell, Snuff Mills, Canterbury Cathedral and Langford Budville, I neither saw nor heard anything specific: there was simply a dark feeling of evil in all four places.  Yet when I have experienced something which could be a ghostly encounter, it hasn't been frightening at all, merely intriguing.  

The Theatre Royal in Bristol has a reputation for being haunted by several different ghosts.  My strange experience happened in the spring of 2007, in the Ladies' toilets. My elder daughter had gone on ahead; I'd finished my drink before following her a couple of minutes later.  As I walked in, I heard a outburst of sobbing in one of the two occupied cubicles.  I turned and exchanged a concerned glance with a woman standing by the sink.  After a while, the door of one of the toilets opened and out walked its occupant.  She showed no sign of distress at all and departed with her waiting friend.  I began to worry.  As I hadn't passed her on the way in, and there was no one else in the toilets, I figured the crying person in the other cubicle had to be my daughter.  She hadn't long split up with her partner and I knew she was pretty miserable, but I hadn't realised just how distraught she must be to wail in public. After a bit I called her name, then tentatively pushed at the door.  To my surprise it swung open to reveal … no one.  I left perplexed, rather than frightened.  I still can't fathom what both I and the waiting woman undoubtedly heard. 

Eighteen months later, in autumn 2008, I visited Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, the thought of hauntings far from my mind as I wandered along the cloisters, taking photos and delighting in this fragment of wall painting and that play of light and shadow. 

In the north-east corner of the cloister we came to a room – well, more of a passage really – known as the Parlour, where visitors to the Abbey were received in mediaeval times.  To the left of the doorway was a rectangle of orange plastic fencing, closing off a section of uneven floor and partially blocking the view into the room.  As I stepped over the threshold I found myself looking over to the light-filled Warming Room on the right.  Through the open door I could see pillars and a massive cauldron, and I remember thinking how familiar they looked, as both room and its contents make an appearance in one of the early Harry Potter films.  Then I stopped dead and heard myself say 'Whoa!'  It was as if I'd come up hard against an invisible barrier or obstruction, or received a mild electric shock – or someone or something had walked through me.  At which point I looked towards the window at the back of the Parlour and saw three stone coffins along each of the three stone walls.

Again it wasn't scary, just a bit surprising.  When I got home I did a bit of googling.  There was no mention of a ghost specifically in that room in any of the official literature I read, but I did come across a photo of the interior complete with coffins and a vague, misty sort of blur that the person who posted it claimed was a ghost.  It's accompanied by a caption saying 'this is where I felt the presence of Anne Trubelle, a lady in her early 30s'.  But who Anne Trubelle was, when she lived, and where this information comes from wasn't stated.

Then there's the personal: the sensation, back in 1996, of sinking irrevocably under the stress of my then-life and suddenly feeling a distinct lightening of the weight on my shoulders, as if someone had walked up to me and physically lifted a burden from them.  

Later that year, I moved house with my now ex-husband and four young children.  My grandmother, Hilda Hill, was almost five years dead and I remember thinking, as I was packing up, that our new house would be the first she'd never visited.  I wondered if she'd know where we'd gone.  But I wasn't thinking of her a few weeks later as I walked from the kitchen of the new place into the hall and sensed her standing in the corner behind me.  So strong was this feeling that I stopped in my tracks and looked around.  I could see nothing apart from the understairs cupboard door and kitchen door and the short stretch of wall running between them, but I was so convinced she was there that I greeted her out loud and told her how happy I was that she'd come after all, that she'd found me. 

About six weeks ago, there was an echo of this on the day I moved to my new home.  Resting for a moment on a handy cardboard box and chatting with my son and his girlfriend, I was suddenly aware of sunlight, a feeling of warmth and my grandmother's laughter - Hilda all around me in my new life.     

My grandmother was the cornerstone of my childhood and my first three years of motherhood.   Almost 25 years after her death she still shapes the way I am.  A psychologist might say her constant presence in my mind would explain why occasionally I've imagined her present - except that both times I've been absorbed in what I was doing, yet have suddenly known, with all my wit and reason, that she is with me, as palpably as any other member of my family.  

On the Trail of Ted Hughes and Robert de Middlecote

The Yorkshireman was unimpressed. Why was there a Ted Hughes Poetry Trail just off Dartmoor at Stover Country Park?  

'Well,' I hazarded, 'it's Ted Hughes Country, isn't it?' 

'Naw!' he riposted. 'Naw, it's not!'

And he's right, Stover is not Ted Hughes country (though his memorial on the moor would indicate that he's an adopted son of Devon). 

In fact, the poet never visited this corner of the county, but this was the site earmarked for the trail, and the council, along with Hughes' widow, Carol, and celebrated author and illustrator Raymond Briggs, made the most of its modest charms.   

A nature reserve is the perfect place to display some of the poems of that great nature poet, and whilst this visit I missed the synchronicity of seeing a cormorant across the lake as I read the poem 'A Cormorant', there were sand martins swooping over the water instead and they were great.  


Even the Yorkshireman came round in the end.






My favourite bit of the trail is the nondescript valley, within earshot of the busy A38, through which a series of enormous pylons fizzle and spit.  Even poetry can't rescue this place, I grumped, the first time I visited.  But then you get to the middle of the valley and read this:

'The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where had he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows.

Taller than a house, the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, on the very brink, in the darkness. 

The wind sang through his iron fingers. His great iron head, shaped like a dustbin but as big as a bedroom, slowly turned to the right, slowly turned to the left. His iron ears turned, this way, that way. He was hearing the sea. His eyes, like headlamps, glowed white, then red, then infa-red, searching the sea. Never before had the Iron Man seen the sea.'

Genius. After that,  how can mossy tree stumps not be the vertebrae of a monster surfacing through earth?

Or the forest not harbour a trail of breadcrumbs?

Talking of which, let's follow this path of white flint to Lidwell Chapel, high on Haldon Moor behind the biscuit tin by the sea.  The first time I ever visited it, on my own, I was so spooked that I vowed never to go there ever again.  And of course, I have failed  to stick to my resolution because as soon as you mention the place and your reaction to it, any self-respecting walking companion wants to go there.

Lidwell (or Lady's Well) was most likely a pagan place of worship long before the advent of Christianity, on account of its well.    

The isolated chapel was built in the 13^th century and dedicated either to Our Lady or St Mary Magdalene.  There are records of mass being held there in the 14th century and of it being a place of pilgrimage. 


The legend of Lidwell concerns a monk called Robert de Middlecote, who on 28^th March 1328 was accused of 'mistreating' Agnes, the daughter of Roger the Miller, at the small, private Chapel of La Wallen at Gidleigh on Dartmoor. Alice was pregnant and the monk caused the death of her unborn child.

De Middlecote was to appear before Thomas de Chageforde, the King's Justice, but vanished before the trial took place.   

He then turned up in Lidwell, where he apparently spent his days listening to the confessions of pilgrims and nights in search of passing travellers whom he would entice to the chapel with offers of food and shelter. 

The weary and hungry travellers, seeing that he was a monk, would gladly take up his offer, but the meal they were served had been laced with a soporific, and once they were semi-conscious, de Middlecote would stab them, rob them of their valuables, and throw their bodies into the Holy Well just inside the chapel door.

In due course the monk met his match.  A sailor accepted his hospitality and whilst in prayer, glimpsed Brother Robert preparing to pounce with his knife.  

In the struggle, de Middlecote toppled into the well.  The sailor then ran to the nearby farm for help and with the farmer hauled the murderer back out, along with a bucketful of decomposing remains.

If you think this sounds improbable, the Bishop of Exeter's register for the year 1329 contains an entry relating to the execution of a hermit monk, one Robert de Middlecote, who had been convicted of murder.  You could argue that he is England's first documented serial killer. 

Both the footpath and the Chapel itself were far more overgrown than the last time I visited, some six years ago.  Whatever the truth of the story, there's a decidedly disconcerting atmosphere to the place and  I was glad to see this cross here, tucked in a niche in the arch which is just about all that still stands of the building.  

You should do what you can for unquiet spirits.

The Path to Lidwell

Clouds drag these hills. They do not stay.

Seasons stream beneath my feet,

shingle in time’s undertow.

I remember the sea, its rattle and hiss

on the distant shore.  Now it lights

a silent horizon I can’t reach.

I have seen trees

seed themselves, moulder, fall.

The sediment of centuries is thick

beneath my nails. So many years

have wiped my mind, effaced his gaze

yet his invitation prickles in my brain

and the treachery of heather

that hid a path of flint

as white as crumb!

Oh, I was lulled by the hymn of bees – 

I took the cross on his brow

for the mark of a man of God.

No gorse snagged my skirts in anxious warning.

Every rock stood mute and watched.

They’d seen it all before –

the weary pilgrim, holy well,

the glimmering welcome of the chapel lit within. 

My saviour smiled as I confessed

and absolved me of my sin,

my salvation a tepid broth

of destroying angels.

I heard them singing as their blackening

flowers blossomed in my eyes.  

I didn’t feel his knife.

There’s nothing living here at all,

save an occasional dull green

slithering in the trees.

The path is broken bone and skull.

I am pinned to this red soil by dearth of grace.

Some stains bleed too deep to be erased.

©Deborah Harvey 2014

This poem is in my second collection, Map Reading For Beginners, published by Indigo Dreams Publishing.

A Most Haunting Castle - Writing from the Ruins

Off to Devon with my mother yesterday, to do a few chores at the two caravans and read a poem in St Mary's, Berry Pomeroy.  No prizes for guessing which bit of the day I was looking forward to most, so shall draw a veil over the carpet brushing and curtain adjusting, the tour of Teignmouth charity shops - I bought three poetry books, one of which (Collected Poems of Gillian Clarke) I already own but it was such a bargain, I couldn't leave it on the shelf - and tea in Morrisons in Totnes (surely the Littlewoods Cafe de nos jours).  So, on to Berry Pomeroy!

The Totnes writer Bob Mann, whom I first met on MySpace back in the day, founded the Longmarsh Press in 2008 to publish books on Devon or by Devon authors.  His latest publication is 'A Most Haunting Castle - Writings from the Ruins at Berry Pomeroy', to which I contributed a poem, hence the invitation to join him and some of the others involved for the reading in the glorious setting of Berry Pomeroy Church.

I've visited the Castle a couple of times, once en famille in 2000, and once more recently with just Samuel and Ted, who was a puppy at the time and who spent the duration of the visit sat with Samuel, howling for my return.  Which is kind of apt, because Berry Pomeroy is reputed to be one of the most haunted ruins in the country.

Its two most famous ghosts are the White Lady and the Blue Lady.  The former is associated with the eerie part of the ruin known as St Margaret’s Tower, and is believed to be the spirit of Margaret Pomeroy, who was imprisoned in its dungeon by her jealous older sister, Eleanor, after they both fell in love with the same knight.  Legend has it that Margaret starved to death there. The Blue Lady has been encountered in various areas of the castle, and there are tales of her luring male visitors into danger in a bid to rescue her from unstable parts of the walls.  She is generally assumed to be the ghost of the daughter of one of the Norman Lords of the castle, by whom she was impregnated.  She is believed to have smothered the newborn child, whose cries can also be heard on occasion.  She is also regarded as a portent of death.

Yet another story concerning the Pomeroys tells of two brothers who, instead of battling a long siege they knew they could never win, dressed in full armour and, having blindfolded their horses, rode them over the precipice upon which the castle stands. There are reports of the sound of hooves, screaming and then a crashing below in the valley to this day.

Other people at other times have reported seeing a man in a tricorn hat, a tall man in a dark suit, a man in old-fashioned country clothes, a large black dog, an old man carrying a scythe, a quaint old lady, a small hooded boy, a sullen girl, an Elizabethan in a ruff, a man in Stuart costume, a face at the gatehouse window, a lady in a grey dress and another in dark clothing, an assortment of knights and Cavaliers in full regalia, and a friendly old woman standing on a bridge over the brook.  Some swear they have glimpsed windows in the 17^th century part of the ruin fully glazed; others have experienced a time slip in the nearby village, seeing it as it would have appeared hundreds of years ago.  One family flying in a helicopter over the ruins saw roofs and smoke coming from chimneys. And if that’s not enough, strange lights have been witnessed, voices have been heard, there are cold spots and freak winds, the smell of perfume, the sound of doors slamming (even though there are none), and strange shadows with no earthly form to cast them.  Cameras frequently malfunction, photographs often fail to come out or show shapes and figures that weren’t originally there, and in Spring 2006 local investigators detected through dowsing one female and six male presences who had died between the 15^th and 18^th centuries of causes including heart failure, disease, murder (stabbing), and accident.  Oh, and they also encountered Margaret herself and a young girl aged nine called Isabelle, the illegitimate child of Baron de Pomeroy, who had been murdered while trying to prevent her mother from being raped. Oh, and a black dog. (Not Ted.)

I have my own creepy, if rather tenuous, connection to the place.  In May 2001, I started to write a ghost story as an exercise for the writing course I was taking at the time, and having visited Berry Pomeroy just the year before, I decided to set it there.  I was writing with no idea of what was going to happen next (something I seldom do) when a blackly malevolent presence manifested itself on the page and I heard the word 'corvine' spoken behind me.  This was enough to make me abandon the whole enterprise in fright.  A couple of hours later, as I was taking in the washing from the line, my then husband came out to tell me that my 22-year-old cousin, with all his life before him, had hanged himself not two miles away from where I had been writing that afternoon and at the very moment I’d set my tale aside.

Although it's not the scariest place I've ever visited (that'ld be Lidwell Chapel, high on Haldon Moor, which I swore never to return to again, only to break that vow three months later at the behest of a friend who said it wasn't all creepy but whose border collie refused to go anywhere near the place), I was quite relieved that the reading was taking place in St Mary's, even more so because the only previous time I'd been to the village, there was a funeral in progress and I hadn't felt able to wander around snapping photos.  And it's a beauty, being quite large and still boasting its 42 foot long rood screen.     

It was impossible to get a good shot of the whole screen because a stage had been erected in front of it for the evening's proceedings, which means I'm going to have to go back, but here's a few details.

I especially liked the little birds carved amongst the foliage.  They are a feature of many of the churches around Totnes and remind me of the much later design, Strawberry Thief, by William Morris. Though these two look more like starlings than thrushes to me.

No rood screen deserving of the name would be complete without the scars of what will inevitably have been a tumultuous history. It's often assumed that damage to churches was caused by Oliver Cromwell's men during and after the Civil War, but it's more likely that the defacing of saints on the rood screen was done in response to the Edwardian Injunctions of 1548 which demanded the removal of all images from English Churches. 

What's really interesting about the defacement in St Mary's is that it appears to have been done by three different people. How do we know?  Well, one did it with horizontal gouges ...

one with vertical ones ...

while one scraped very carefully - almost tenderly - at just the face.
 

Anyhow, it was a great evening, and is likely to be repeated on either June 1st or June 8th at the Durant Arms in Ashprington.  

'A Most Haunting Castle - Writing from the Ruins', edited by Bob Mann, costs £7.99, ISBN 978-0-9561705-2-1.  Longmarsh Press books are available from local independent bookshops or through Waterstones, or direct from The Longmarsh Press, 5 Brook View, Follaton, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5FH. (Probably best to email Bob first to find out what the p&p charges are - bobmann@supanet.com.)