On the Question of Evil (and a Very Lovely Garden)

We didn't feel as confident as we looked returning to the 15th century church in deepest, darkest Somerset we'd fled from fourteen and a half years earlier. 

Well, Cathy might have but I felt more like this:

The reason being, this was the Church where not just I, the suggestible poet and one-time watcher of 'Most Haunted', but also my companion, the uber-sceptical and very sensible former nurse, simultaneously detected a presence so evil in the chancel that we only ventured a few steps inside before rushing back out through the door.

Yes, we were very brave and went back.  I suppose it helped that it wasn't a dark afternoon in late January this time, and the familiar red sandstone of the church looked warm and welcoming. 

I'd contacted the church authorities in advance to check whether it would be open - no point lugging all that anxious anticipation about unnecessarily - and as it happened, we were met by one of the members of the congregation, who told us about the church and its links with the local school, her imminent holiday in the Caribbean, how she prefers to eat the figs from her garden (grilled with goat's cheese and honey), and the old woman who knitted the figures from the story of Noah's Ark. She even led us right through the chancel to the altar, the area where that unspeakable emanance seemed to be coming from, to show off the restoration of the stencilled tiles, of which she was very proud. 

I would say that this chattiness helped, except that as soon as we'd set foot inside, it had been clear that whatever was there last time was gone. The interior of the church was just as unforbidding as its exterior.

Before she left, our welcomer asked if we had any questions, which obviously we did, pressing ones of a theological nature, but we just looked at each other and decided not to mention our previous visit for fear of causing offence. 

As soon as we were alone, we started to work out what had happened all those years earlier. Once through the door, we must have headed in different directions. I remembered glancing at the table where the guide books and parish magazines would have been kept, if there were any, but not picking anything up. I'd imagined over the years that this was because I was already on my way out of the building, but Cathy said I'd walked past it and gone further into the church than her, almost as far as the central aisle, and actually, I do recall an impression of light ahead and to my right, which contrasted with the gloom of the nave and seemed more abundant, and more golden, than any natural light coming through the east window at that time of day in January. So, maybe there was a light switched on, I don't know. Anyway, it was there in the chancel, somewhere near the altar, that this feeling of evil was lurking. When I think now of words that might describe it, I get 'obscene', 'waiting', 'dark', 'golden' and 'hideous', which don't really help. Plus 'terrifying', of course. 

Cathy, meanwhile, had stayed closer to the table. As I turned, swiftly, to leave, I remember her hurrying towards me at an angle. In my head the distances are far greater than they could have been in reality; it was just a few steps - a few seconds - before we were back outside again, but the fact neither of us could get out of there quickly enough made the church seem vast in my recollection. 

I'd run through scenarios in my head during the week or so our revisit was in the planning. My biggest fear had been that we'd go back and the evil would still be there, and I reasoned that would mean it somehow had something to do with (one of) us, if a whole congregation and village school could use the building without noticing anything that vile. I'd also wondered whether finding the church 'normal' would make us realise that actually what we'd experienced - and remembered - hadn't been a big deal at all, just some slightly strange spookery, possibly something even caused by my mental state. (I was panicky and emotionally very fragile at the time, my difficult, damaging marriage having ended, abruptly, just a week earlier.) Which are both ways of saying maybe it had something to do with (one of) us, rather than the building and its purpose.

We wandered around the church. It was so very 'normal'. The only thing that wasn't was that my photos weren't coming out very well (but it was quite dark).

Perpendicular, possibly mid-16th century font

the wonky, early to mid-16th century south aisle

Monument to William Bacon and his wife, Joane, who died in 1663 and 1669 respectively

This very chipper angel tooting a trumpet on the gravestone of one of the members of the de Haviland family ... 

... and this gorgeous badger kneeler from a Millennium project added to the cheery atmosphere. 

There was even a poetry moment, my first such in all my years of church-crawling, only I had none of my collections to leave there as we'd come down in Cathy's car. 

In the end we left more convinced than ever of the nature of our earlier encounter in that church, and it troubles me as a someone who believes we have souls, who hopes very much for some sort of consciousness after death, and whose notion of a presiding spirit, shall we say, is inherently benign. I've seen that evil exists in the world, in the things people do and say, but I've also grown used to thinking that hell, with all its accoutrements, is a mediaeval construct to frighten the peasantry - ie me. So what is this entity we encountered back in 2009, and where does it fit in? I think maybe I need to consult a theologian. 

We carried on with our journey through Somerset. Brilliantly - though it might not have been deliberately - Cathy had selected Hestercombe Gardens as our next destination, for where better than a garden to deliberate the existence of evil (except for over our delicious and very reasonably priced lunch in the former stables of Hestercombe House)? 

We pondered some more while wandering around the 18th century landscape garden, followed by the formal Arts and Crafts garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens. 

Actually, 18th century landscape gardens really aren't my or Cathy's thing. We were there for Jekyll and Lutyens, but it would have been rude not explore the whole of the site, plus we had Bakewell tart with clotted cream and lemon and blackberry posset to walk off. 

an ingenious bug hotel with a slate roof

a view of the Blackdown Hills

'the Great Cascade'

I managed to free this green-veined butterfly from a  spider's web without damaging it, and it hung around for a while afterwards, recovering.

Cathy proved to be fully prepared to brave the possibility of an encounter with evil, but not a mute swan, so we turned back at this point.

'the Sibyl's Temple' (yawn)

'the Pope's Urn'

These ducks - and more - came hurtling towards us expecting duck food but alas, we didn't have any.

An earthball -  I think it's a Leopard's Earthball but not entirely certain

Down by the Arts and Crafts garden, we sat on a Lutyens-designed bench under the next best things to an apple tree in this Eden, which was a fig tree and a vine. (Figs seemed to be the theme of the day, as Cathy had brought a bagful with her when she came to pick me up - though this particular tree wasn't in fruit.)

Common Darter

It's a bit of a feat to have a garden looking anything approaching good in August but the gardeners at Hestercombe have managed it ...  

... although, of course, it does have the most beautiful bones, in the form of stone-lined rills and pools, spouts and cascades, steps seeded with Mexican fleabane, portholes and gates opening onto sudden vistas. 

We sat at the end of the garden, facing the house, which is 16th century with 18th century additions hidden behind a 19th century frontage. I didn't find it very pleasing, and couldn't help wishing whoever commissioned the Jekyll/Lutyens gardens had got Lutyens to pop one of his houses there too.

a moulting robin

And then suddenly it was getting on for five o'clock and time to go home, with one last look over the Blackdowns. We agreed it had been a good and very necessary day out, but one that left us with more questions than answers. 

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.  

Ghost Month

The black spots which tell you which ring is which on my stove have worn away (probably from too much scrubbing, ha ha!)  So last night instead of stewing fruit for my breakfast today, I set fire to the bread board.

When our Chinese Takeaway arrived, the delivery man asked if I'd been burning incense.  I said no, although I did like to burn oil from time to time, and he said to make sure I did it for the next four weeks as that very day heralded the start of Ghost Month in the traditional Chinese calendar, when the Gates of Hell are sprung open to allow ghosts access to the world of the living. Apparently these spirits spend the month visiting their families, feasting and and seeking victims.

'It's the most dangerous time of the year,' he continued. 'Evil spirits are on the look-out for souls to capture.  The best way to get rid of them is to burn incense and light candles.  I've started doing it in the back of my shop, and already I can see black shapes streaming past from the corner of my eye.'

Yes, I know.  But I have had several encounters that defy reason, and I don't believe in turning down advice from the Universe in the form of our lovely delivery man who gives us a bamboo calendar at the start of every non Chinese New Year.   Plus, exercising my own demons has not worked.  Miles over Dartmoor and they nap in the footwell of the passenger seat on the way home, jumping out fully restored at the end of our journey while I collapse on the bench in the biscuit tin by the sea, good for nothing.  Maybe it's time for exorcism instead. Pass the matchbox, please.