After all this time you would think they might have. Surely, it is fundamental to Christian
belief?
Not being a
clergyman I’ll remain puzzled.
However, at lunchtime today I had the privilege of talking to Ken Taylor, historian and chronicler of local ghost accounts (2 & 3). And I thought that, as this post was the first on this blog in 2011, having moved from Freeservers, it might be an opportune time for a re-post.
I do need to make one thing clear: if everything you see or read is to YOU proof of the paranormal, strange creatures, UFOs from space or whatever because it said so on a website/TV then fair enough. If the same things are tou YOU proof positive that people are seeing things or hoaxers then fair enough.
For me, if there is an explanation/solution then I say so. I say to your face what I tell people in private. There is no point in my lying. If I can find no solution I will say so. The whole point is that if you come up with one unexplained case out of a hundred then you have to ask why those other cases were explainable but not that particular one?
You investigate and research and when you have a neat stack of those "unexplained" cases you dive in. Does there appear to be a link somewhere.....it gets boring to the casual person but you can only build up a theory if you have a bulk of cases that have so far defied explanation.
There are Ufologists, Cryptozoologists and Paranormalist who absolutely hate me for this. But I want to seek out the truth. Read that definition above of Skeptics!
So, here is the re-post.
I am one of those sad, depressing people who
believe you are born, live and then die.
Finito. Otherwise, why have none
of those who might want to, in fact who
promised to, made a re-appearance after death?
People like Charles Fort (founder, against his wishes, of Forteanism), Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, Harold T. Wilkins, Arthur Constance or my late colleague
Franklyn A. Davin-Wilson who sat down weeks before his untimely death and said
to me: ”Terry, after I’m dead, don’t s*** your pants if I pop up in front of
you!”
Every New Years
Day at Midnight I toast Franklyn but nothing and if some obstinate old sod was
going to return from the dead it would be him!
And both grandparents and parents promised they would return "to scare you!" And after decades: nothing.
The history of the
Church is full of accounts of ghosts of all types and there are numerous cases
of poltergeists (one of the most famous
British cases, the Lamb Inn was detailed in a chapter of Some Things Strange & Sinister). Whereas the Church in general with all its
theologians have taken centuries but left it up to individuals to make their
minds up,the Catholic Church is another matter.
Though with all
the Press and Media sensationalism over recent years the Catholic Church tends
to be less public it takes a fair stance.
As one of the more conservative religions, there is nothing in its
teachings or practices that says ghosts can or cannot exist. In fact,by the very records of Catholicism it
seems clear there is every reason to suppose that ghosts do exist. There is nothing
stating that followers of the faith cannot or must not encounter or report
ghosts.
I often feel quite
disgusted when I see a priest of any religion on TV,Radio or in printed
interviews declaring that “there are no such things as ghosts”. That is tantamount to stating that there is
no belief in Heaven or Hell in their religion…or God. In which case, there is the admission that
the Church has been ripping off its members for centuries.
My personal
experience on so called “ghostly matters” are not very spectacular.
Back in 1966/1967,I was living in Dalborn,Germany. One
overcast,slightly drizzly but very
oppressive thundery day,along with two of my cousins,I headed for a
stream that
had become flooded –we had much fun crossing the stream using the trunk
of an
old tree placed there by someone months before. We watched as soldiers
in trucks drove by and
waved but the horrible,smokey brown low cloud made little difference –we
were
having fun!
Not far from the
stream, in easy view, was an upward sloping path near to a reputedly haunted
mill [though we never knew that at the time].
The entire length of the path was covered in an arch of tree branches
with the far end allowing in light. At
one point, all three of us turned to look up this path. At the very end of the path stood a tall, misty grey figure
devoid [seemingly] of any facial or clothing features. The figure moved forward.
Three kids ran
like Hell!
Of course, in the
prevailing weather conditions it is possible any normal person might have
seemed grey and featureless. That would
explain it away to my satisfaction. But
why did all three of us turn at the same time and run without speaking to each
other?
In England,
in my grandparents St Werburgh’s home, we had a typical terraced house
situation for the mid-1960s. The old tin
bath has on a hook outside the back door for bath nights and the toilet was
outside the house. The row of houses
looked out onto Mina
Road Park
and there was a stream, an off-shoot of the River Frome which ran under
houses. On more than one occasion, while
seated in “the throne room” I heard voices quite distinctly, though what
exactly was being said I couldn’t tell you.
I was not the only person to hear these voices –my mother dreaded having
to use the outside toilet but just said, in a thick German accent “it’s
spooky”.
In a small back
bedroom over-looking the garden, privy and park,there was definitely something
“odd”. The room had been given over to
my mother and father on returning from Germany. Within the week my mother would not even
venture into the room alone and rooms were swapped around. It is odd but, thinking about it years later,
I recall my grand mother never ventured into the room by herself either and
never used it for a bedroom. Two later
lodgers did complain about “something wrong” with the room.
And so,the two
boys were moved into the room. I was an
insomniac even at that young age and on many occasions felt an unknown presence
–I did have a waking dream once when I saw the silhouette of a bent over witch
complete with pointed hat and threw a book at “her”.
On another
occasion we were all downstairs and heard very loud banging from upstairs and
in the room in question. My parents and
grandparents rushed up to find my older brother quite incoherent on the
floor stating something had thrown him
against the wall. I was ushered
downstairs so I could not hear what else was said. That ended our time in that room.
Only years later,
after we had moved out was I told that the little dark room had always had an
odd atmosphere. My mother seemed quite
at ease with telling me these things though never in front of my older
brother.
Apart from
mysterious deposits on cars parked at Greenway Boys
School [see
Introduction], my time in Southmead was quiet.
Nothing odd.
Around 1975, we
were temporarily living in a caravan park on the outskirts of Ramsgate, Kent,
not 2 kilometres from the sea. Here
things became interesting again. My
father got a temporary job at the Hovertel, then not too far from the Ramsgate
Hoverport. Employed there as a bouncer
was a man I’ll call “Ted”. Ted was
around 1.9m [6’ 6”] tall, had a thick, bushy moustache and a very notable
broken nose. I wasn’t surprised to learn
that this brick-wall of a man had been a paratrooper [possibly a mercenary at
one point] and later a policeman. Not
the type of man you wanted to annoy.
While we were all
seated around the bar area one evening, Ted was eating his dish of snails in
garlic butter when the manager noted that some crates needed bringing up from
the cellars below. Ted coughed and
replied “You know what you can do!” I pointed
out that a big strong lad like him shouldn’t worry about lifting a few boxes
and he came back with “I have no concerns about boxes –it’s what’s down there!”
We were told how
the cellars were linked to old smugglers caves, not unusual around the English
coast. Apparently, the reason Ted and
the manager were the only permanent employees (which I always thought was odd)
was that the cellars were said to be haunted.
Both men had been in the cellars one night when the temperature dropped
suddenly and both men shivered violently.
Nothing unusual in that they thought but then the electric lights
started dimming. Ted was not in the
least bit concerned – until both heard deep breathing and voices from out of
thin air. Records were broken getting up
the steps.
I asked if I could
go down the cellars myself but Ted took my arm and whispered in a very
deliberate manner: ”You do not want
to go down there alone!”. My father
laughed it off (but not to Ted’s face) and lasted a week as a cellarman but
would not go back there after something happened in the cellars he would not
discuss.
All a bit of an
anti-climax for me. Then, one night, during
full Moon when the whole area where we were staying was as visible as in daylight,
I saw a shadow and looked upward to see a huge bird gliding silently above me
at about 6 metres –and it was a big bird.
Today, considering other “big bird” sightings in the UK at the time, I feel sure this must have been
a European Eagle Owl (now breeding in the UK), but at the time it made me
jump!
When we returned
to Bristol we
moved into a house in the Knowle area.
Things did tend to go missing but later turned up exactly where you’d
looked.
Occasionally, things
“fell” from the wall unit. I say “fell”
though I saw an ornament slide three inches off the shelf before falling
straight to the floor. As there were
quite a few of us, I slept on a sofa downstairs watching what TV there was
until close down, insomnia still being a problem. I was lying back looking at the open window
when I quite distinctly saw a dark figure move from one doorway, leading
upstairs toward the kitchen. “I didn’t
even see you come in” I said, thinking
it was a family member. But the figure
had vanished.
My mother’s
attitude was that there might be a ghost
in the house but, as she pointed out, dead people can’t hurt you.
The funniest
incident happened one Christmas. The
living room was decorated out and I had just watched a TV programme about
ghosts and the devil with a sister and my younger brother. “Yeah, right.” I said loudly, ”if there’s a
devil let him pop one of the red balloons!”
A red balloon then popped! I just
wished the scene had been preserved by video camera.
Without doubt the
only place I have felt really
frightened in was a house my youngest sister and her partner had moved to in Bath. The top floor belonged to someone else but
the lower two floors was theirs –the bathroom on the lowest level. The place was spacious and I was really
impressed. It was a lovely Summer day and anything odd was far from my mind.
At one point I had
to answer the “call of nature” and took the steps down to the lower area. A few feet from the bathroom I said “come on
give me a clue –I’m lost!,” I had the strongest feeling that someone was behind
me –my sister or her partner. I turned
when there was no reply. No one was
there. I continued, calling myself a few
unprintable names for talking to myself.
However, without
warning, and despite every attempt I made to fight it, I had the overwhelming
feeling that I was not alone and my heart started pounding. Anyone who has ever played “tag” in the dark
or blind-folded will know the sensation that someone is close to you. This was over-powering!
I stood for
several seconds, taking deep breaths and trying to slow my heart beat, at which
I succeeded. I even moved my hand around
to see if I could feel a “cold spot” but nothing. So, I decided that my need for the toilet
facilities was far more important.
However, as I got to the bathroom
door I was overcome by an almost unbearable feeling of fear –so intense,
in fact, that I started retreating upstairs before deciding I was being an
idiot.
Again, I moved
down the stairs and felt a “presence”.
Again I retreated upstairs.
I said nothing and
on my next visit decided that I was not
going to be put off from going downstairs by irrational fear. The same
sense of fear was there but in the length of corridor between the
bathroom and
the back garden door the sensation was stronger. I stood for a few
minutes before slowly
returning upstairs.
The only
intimation I had that something might be odd was when my sister decided to
visit the bathroom and her partner said out loud: ”Oh, she’s going to be brave
and go down there alone!” I let that
go. On the next visit we walked down the
stairs to get to the back garden and my sister rushed past the bathroom saying
that she was sure it was haunted. After
making a joke I asked why?
It seems that an old woman who lived in the
house before had drowned herself in the bath.
When I asked at what point she had been told of the death and when she
had first felt the sensation the answer was a quick “months after we moved in
and a long time after sensing it”.
I did check and, yes,an
old woman had drowned in the house and the house had not been easy for people
to live in –people had moved in and out.
Whatever the sensation was though, it was not proof of ghosts just a very interesting experience.
What I do know is
that both my mother and I got “butterflies” in the stomach whenever we drove
over a certain point in a road we frequently used. It was only when I jokingly said “hang on to
your stomaches” one day that I discovered she also got the sensation. A friend in the local water board checked for
me and learnt that there was an old underground stream at the point in
question.
Suicides and
breakdowns often increase prior to thunder storms due to changes in the electromagnetic
field. As a child in Germany, and later on in life, everyone
knew that if I uncharacteristically fell asleep during the day a storm was on
its way. It was infallible. As I’ve gotten older I tend not to fall to
sleep but get plenty of warning of even unforcasted storms.
Even the objects
moving might have a natural explanation and there were underground streams in
the old St Werburgh’s house. So,like the
Church,I’m still not decided…but I’d dearly love to see a genuine ghost!
[1]
Leslie,Shane,Shane Leslie’s Ghost Book, Hollis & Carter,London,1955
[2] Taylor, Ken, Brislington Ghosts & Mysteries, Redcliffe Press, Bristol, 2005
[3] ditto , Ghosts Of Arnos Manor Hotel Bristol, Archyve, Bristol, 2009
