Ghosts -His Luminous Chamber.

  

The reference to a flickering light seen on a wall during the 1846 All Saints haunting is not unusual.  That great investigator of the ghostly, Elliott O’Donnell, even referred to a triangular shaped light at one haunted house.  BBC TV’s Nationwide programme in the 1970s broadcast images of a ball of light in an old squash court and voices, allegedly, of dead RAF men. 

    So there is nothing new.  However, a whole room fully illuminated?

    R. MacDonald Robertson, who was stationed at Trowbridge Artillery Cadet School during World War One, and off duty visited Taunton where he gleamed the account of a Mr. T. Westwood.  It was Westwood’s account of “The Luminous Chamber” that the writer produced in his 1962 article (1).  The account reads:-

            “In the year 1840 I was detained for several months in the sleepy

            old town of Taunton.  My chief associate during that time was a

            fox-hunting squire –a bluff, hearty, genial type of his order, with

            just sufficient intellectuality to temper his animal exuberance.  Many

            were our merry rides among the thorpes and hamlets of pleasant

            Somersetshire: and it was in one of these excursions, while the

            evening sky was like molten copper, and a fiery March wind coursed

            like a racehorse over the open downs, that he related the story of

            ‘His Luminous Chamber’.

 

            “Coming back from the hunt, after dark, he said he had frequently

            observed a central window, in an old hall not far from the roadside,

            illuminated.  All the other windows were dark, but from this one a wan,

            dreary light was visible;and as the owners had deserted the place, and

            he knew it had no occupant, the lighted window became a puzzle to

            him.

 

            “On one accasion, having a brother squire with him, and both carrying

            good store of port wine under their girdles, they declared they would solve

            the mystery of the Luminous Chamber then and there.  Before opening the

            great door, however, my squire averred he had made careful inspection of the

            front of the house from the lawn.  Sure enough,the central window WAS

            illuminated.  An eerie, forlorn-looking light made it stand out in contrast to

            the rest –a dismal light, that seemed to have nothing in common with the

            world, or the life that is.  The two squires visited all the other, leaving the

            luminous room till the last.  There was nothing noticeable in any of them, but

            on entering the luminous room a marked change was perceptible.

 

            “The light in it was not full, but sufficiently so beneath them to distinguish

            its various articles of furniture,which were common and scanty enough.  What

            struck them most was the uniform diffusion of the light;it was as strong under

            the table as on the table,so that not single object projected any shadow.  He

            told me, too, that he had not been many seconds in the room before a sick

            faintness stole over him, a feeling –such was his expression, I remember,--as if    

             his life ‘were being sucked out of him’.   His friend owned up afterwards to

            a similar sensation.

 

            “It had always been the same, the old porter grumbled; the family had never

            occupied the room, but there were no ghosts—‘the room had a light of its

            own’.

 

            “A less sceptical spirit might have opined that the room was FULL of

            ghosts –an  awful conclabe—viewless, inscrutable, but from whom emanated

            that deathly and deafly luminousness.

 

            “My squires must have gone the way of all squires ere this.  After life’s fitful

            fever, do they sleep well?  Or have they both been ‘sucked’ into the luminous

            medium, as a penalty for their intrusion?”

 

    This account is very interesting in that it does not fit into the usual pattern of hauntings.  In fact, can it be classed as a haunting or should it just be classed a mystery?  There is also an extremely interesting aspect of this account that tally with other phenomena -UFOs for one.

 

    The mention of “faintness” and the sensation of the life “being sucked out of him” is very much like the sensation reported by witnesses in some close-up sightings of globular UFOs.  It is believed that this is a side effect of some type of radiation.  If we take into account the fact that this strange light affected one room only, which was never occupied it seems even more likely that the room was a focal point for some type of electro-magnetic phenomena.

    The hall is not identified, more is the pity.  Today, if we knew the location, even if the hall has since been demolished, we might still find reports of “odd lights” seen over the area in question.

    We may never know.  “His Luminous Chamber” has kept its secret.