The Black Alchemist: A Terrifying True Story

by Andrew Collins

  Once in Arundel, we drove around the town’s quaint, medieval streets looking for the castle. Eventually we found its huge embattled wall and came to a halt in a small car park at the front of the main entrance.

  Braving the constant drizzle, we set off on foot.

  With the castle wall to our right, we climbed the hill towards the impressive cathedral church, dedicated to Our Lady and St Philip Howard. Just past an embattled building incorporated within the towering wall, I noticed a recessed archway behind which I could just make out a Christian edifice, which a signboard announced was the parish church of St Nicholas.

  A gravel path led from the archway to a porch on its south side, and strolling along this, I saw a circular path hugging the church’s exterior walls. All just as Bernard had seen.

  As Ken and I stood in the pouring rain, quietly studying the assorted gravestones, crosses and box tombs—which were only on the western half of the churchyard—I felt good inside.

  Bernard had not been wrong. It was this church he had seen when psychometrising the ape dagger. The discrepancy lay, not in his psychic information, but with the castle guide. Its aerial map indicated the position of the church, but neglected to mention there are in fact two embattled walls encircling the castle—an inner wall and an outer wall.

  With the problem resolved, we made a quick study of the church interior before retiring for something to eat.

  54. The pyramid-shaped roof of Arundel’s church of St Nicholas seen sticking out behind the castle walls. Taking a seat next to the window in an empty café, I glanced up at the castle’s outer wall on the opposite side of the road while Ken placed our order with the young waitress.

  As she walked away, Ken removed his soaking wet donkey jacket and placed it on the back of the chair. ‘Are you now positive it was Arundel that Bernard saw?’

  Absolutely. There could be no doubt of this any more. The Black Alchemist’s female accomplice either lived in the town, or she was strongly connected with it in some way, perhaps even with the castle.

  ‘Have you got a name for her yet?’ he asked, meaning a Christian name, or surname.

  This amused me. What could we call her? We already had the Black Alchemist, or BA for short. So how about the Black Sorceress? Or what about the Black Sorceress of Arundel? BSA for short!

  ‘BSA’ Ken laughed, shaking his head. ‘How do you expect anyone to take you seriously with a name like that?’

  A sense of humour?

  Accepting my word, he found another question. ‘So, where do you go from here?’

  We visit Clapham Wood the next day.

  ‘What about tracking down “BSA”?’ Ken queried.

  Certainly, at some point in the not too distant future, we would have to return to Arundel to see if we could find her. However, I had the distinct impression there would be no need to seek her out as she would eventually find us.

  55. Arundel’s church of St Nicholas,

  where

  Bernard

  encountered BSA’s energy form.

  Saturday, 2nd January. As gale-force winds—the worst the country had seen since the previous year’s hurricane—gusted wildly across the South Downs, our vehicle navigated the pitted track that snaked its way towards Clapham church, which stood at the entrance to the ominous woods of the same name.

  Bernard’s words, spoken as we sat in the car following the Running Well confrontation, kept repeating in my mind: ‘Now I see more woods, at a place called Clapham … Something’s been going on there; ritual, I think. I also see a church nearby, reached down a long, winding road. Not a nice feeling about the place. Best left alone.’

  56. St Mary’s church, Clapham, by the infamous woods in West Sussex. Parking the car beneath the tree cover outside the churchyard, Ken, along with local paranormal investigator Charles Walker, who had offered to give us a guided tour of the woods, got out and watched as I took several shots of the quaint medieval church. Despite the high winds, there was a clear blue sky and a low winter sun, making it ideal light for photography.

  Carrying on, the three figures stepped inside the church to study the various memorials to the renowned Shelley family, before moving back out into the open and tackling the wooden stile on the eastern boundary of the churchyard. From here it was just a short trek across a muddy field to the edge of Clapham Wood.

  Charles stopped to point out the old manor house where in 1979 he had come across a striking demonic mural in one of its disused buildings. Whether or not it was linked to strange goings on inside the woods, however, was quite another matter.29

  Inside the woods we were shocked by what we saw. Much of the woodland had been completely razed to the ground by the hurricane’s ferocious winds. Miles of dense tree cover had been reduced to a mass of fallen, twisted and tangled mayhem.

  Some areas had already been cleared. Other parts were exactly as they had been left following the destruction of the previous year. Never before had I seen anything quite like this. It was the sort of devastation one might expect after a nuclear holocaust or comet impact.

  Every part of the wood was the same. Wherever you went, hundreds of trees littered the ground making it almost impossible to leave the paths.

  To make matters worse, the gale-force winds were increasing in strength. As we walked cautiously below what remained of the tall tree cover, we contemplated the possibility of further falls as the wind hissed and roared through the woods. It was an eerie sensation that gave the whole place a foreboding atmosphere.

  ‘This wood is totally unrecognisable,’ Charles admitted, shaking his head, as we climbed over yet another fallen tree trunk. ‘The whole area has been completely devastated. Known sites and specific spots, they simply no longer exist.’

  Having seen enough, we headed back to the car.

  57. Charles Walker stands in astonishment at the devastation in Clapham Wood following the Great Storm of 1987. Pulling out onto the dual carriageway of the busy A27, I thought seriously about the chaotic destruction we had just witnessed in Clapham Wood.

  Somehow Arundel, Clapham and West Sussex was BSA’s territory, whereas the Black Alchemist perfected his own unique brand of landscape alchemy at sites in neighbouring East Sussex. So had they combined their nefarious activities to incorporate elements of his Graeco-Egyptian magic and alchemy and her own, perhaps more feminine, brand of witchcraft and occultism?

  It did seem likely, and in the future we were going to see the results of that partnership. Of this, I was absolutely sure.

  40 The Summoning

  Tuesday, 9th February, 1988. Throughout the day I had the uncanny feeling that something was in the air. The weathermen were predicting another hurricane, and the Black Alchemist, as we knew, liked to move under the cover of high winds.

  Ever since the hurricane the previous October, I had been on edge every time gale-force winds struck the country. It was almost as if I could now sense their raw, elemental power.

  Yet nothing had happened. Bernard had not picked up any new material on the Black Alchemist since the previous December, when he had held the ape dagger and pinpointed the West Sussex town of Arundel as in some way connected with the Black Alchemist’s female accomplice.

  Over the previous weekend, Ken Smith and I had revisited Arundel in the hope of trying to find some trace of BSA. However, our extensive enquiries in bookshops, antiques shops, and even with the police, had all come to nothing. Despite this, I did feel that we had sown a seed. If she did live in Arundel, then she would quickly come to realise that someone was asking awkward questions about her. This I hoped might draw her out. Tempt her into making further moves in our direction, no matter what the consequences might be.

  By the late afternoon, the predicted hurricane had not materialised. However, news reports earlier that evening had confirmed that fierce hurricane winds were in the process of devastating other parts of the country.

  Winds gusting up to speeds of 107 mph had already hit Ireland, North Wales, N
orthern England and Scotland—all areas which had escaped the previous hurricane.

  At least ten people had been killed as a direct result of the gales. Fallen trees blocked many major roads and railway lines, and nearly 100,000 homes were now without electricity.

  And there was more on the way. The hurricane-force winds were moving eastwards and would be in the eastern counties by the early evening. Hurricane K, as the weathermen were now referring to the deadly gales, was on its way.

  The high winds were making driving difficult for Bernard as he drove home from work that evening. The radio was reporting gusts of up to 65 mph in Essex, and worse was to come.

  The clock on the dashboard of Bernard’s new MG Montego showed it was already well past six o’ clock. He was to meet Andy at The Griffin just after seven, so he would have to get a move on if he was going to be on time.

  The vehicle came to a halt on his driveway and, climbing out, Bernard walked briskly to the front door. Sliding the key into the lock, he turned it until the door pushed open.

  On the carpet lay a small manila envelope. Picking it up, he stared at it suspiciously. It bore no name or address, and was sealed. Yet its mere existence sent a shiver down his spine. Almost immediately, he felt he knew who it was from, and was glad that his wife and daughter were both out.

  Finding a knife, he slit open the lip and pulled out a tightfitting sheet of black card, some five by three inches in size. On both sides were magical symbols carefully inscribed in pencil that, against the black background, made them difficult to see in the dimly-lit hallway.

  Carrying it into the better light of the kitchen, he studied the strange images and tried, in vain, to interpret their meaning. On one side was a large, vertically drawn, upgraded Monas Hieroglyphica. Below this was a more familiar symbol—an oval shape with lines radiating out from its edge, like those that had appeared on some of the early Black Alchemist spearheads.

  On the other side were groups of unfamiliar magical characters—two sets on one line and another two below them on a second line. Beneath these was what looked like a long knife with a triangular-shaped blade and ball-like handle. Inside the blade was a single word— —which he took to be Greek.

  His stomach began to churn wildly and he frowned in annoyance. It was quite obvious that, after nearly three years of searching, the Black Alchemist had finally found him. But how had this happened? There was a solution, which he hadn’t wanted to think about. Around the time of the dagger-in-the-heart episode the previous November, he was sure that he had been followed home from The Griffin pub in Danbury. At the time, he had dismissed his feelings as mild paranoia, yet now they seemed to take on a new significance.

  Whatever the answer, someone had been to his home that day and left this chilling calling card. So what did it mean? And what would happen next? The hurricane-winds were his sort of weather, so what was he up to this time?

  58. Both sides of the black calling card put through Bernard’s front door in February 1988. A horrible feeling stabbed at his mind. Was someone still around—waiting for him somewhere? In many ways he did not want to know the answer, but for a few brief moments he decided to focus his mind on the black card. He allowed just one impression to filter through to his conscious thoughts. The card had come, not from the Black Alchemist, but from his female accomplice—the Black Sorceress of Arundel, BSA, as Andy was now calling her. She had been prompted to take more direct action following Andy’s foolhardy attempts at tracking her down.

  The sense was that these people were not happy, and would now stop at nothing to curtail this unwanted interference. Bernard entered The Griffin a little after me that evening. Before even sitting down he threw down a small manila envelope, with the words: ‘Here. You’d better take a look at this.’ He didn’t look happy as he walked over to the bar.

  Slipping out the black card, I turned it about in the light and tried to make out its pencil-drawn symbols. The updated Monas symbol and the small oval shape with the lines radiating out from its edge, gave away its sender. Flicking it over, I looked carefully at the four groups of symbols. They were magical characters taken from one of the many so-called grimoires—medieval books of magic and spells. Which one though, I was not sure, most probably the The Clavicle (or Key) of Solomon.

  The knife with the triangular-shaped blade I had not seen before. However, the word , written inside its blade, was obviously Greek. What it meant though, I had no idea.

  Bernard returned to the table and sat down. There was no need for any explanation—it had fallen through his letter box. Right?

  He nodded as he told me how he had come across it earlier that evening. ‘And the only feelings I got on the way up here are of a cockerel being killed, and its feathers being kept and used for some purpose.’ He lit a cigarette as if to emphasise his genuine concern over the situation.

  I had been expecting something like this for some time. BSA was the sort of person who would turn up on your doorstep. She meant business, this was clear. Yet what was she up to here? There was no clear indication from the black card, and the use of medieval grimoire magic and animal sacrifice was something not seen before in connection with the Black Alchemist’s activities. In the past he had always stuck to the magic and alchemy of GraecoRoman Egypt and Renaissance Europe. Never had he stooped so low as to use crude medieval magic.

  In consequence, it looked very much as if this sequence of events was being orchestrated not by the Black Alchemist, but by his female accomplice who, it appeared, practised this type of ritual magic.

  ‘I know,’ he stopped me, cutting dead a conversation he did not wish to hear. ‘The only feeling I get as we sit here is that each group of symbols was drawn on the card only after a specific stage within the ritual. When the whole thing was complete, it was given to me.’

  Intrigued, I wondered whether the calling card contained a message, which might be tapped through the use of psychometry.

  He shook his head: ‘No, I’m not going to psychometrise it. And I’m serious. I’m not going to touch it.’

  Something was obviously going on, so the sooner we knew exactly what that was, the more of an advantage we would have over the situation. The chances were that she was out there somewhere, waiting and poised to make her next move.

  He was still adamant. ‘I’m not going to psychometrise that card, and that’s final,’ he insisted, stubbing out his cigarette in protest. ‘I really don’t care what’s going on out there. If I ignore them, they will leave me alone.’

  It was a foolhardy attitude that would get us nowhere. Burying your head in the sand was not going to make the problem go away.

  Realising that I was fighting a losing battle, I decided to drop the matter, for the moment at least. However, just the card’s presence on the table would probably be enough to spark off something in his mind, so I left it out for that reason.

  Changing the topic, I turned to other research projects we were working on and updated him on some recent developments.

  Several minutes passed before, still speaking, I noticed that Bernard was miles away—a sure sign that he was viewing a clairvoyant image in his mind’s eye. So, what could he see?

  The question broke his concentration. ‘Er, nothing,’ he responded, turning back to me and trying to look interested in my words.

  I carried on talking, but still he was not listening. His vacant gaze gave him away. He was seeing something. So what was it? A church? A castle? A cave? A holy hill?

  He shook his head. ‘No, a crossroads. A road junction, somewhere.’

  A crossroads. A site associated with the worship of Hekate.

  ‘And I don’t feel it’s far from here,’ he added, picking up his glass. ‘There’s someone there. I can’t make out if it’s a real person, or an energy form.’

  Now we were getting somewhere. Pretending to be disinterested, I continued our earlier conversation.

  Bernard then finished off his drink, placed down the glass and stood up. ‘I
can’t stay here. Come on, let’s go to the car.’

  Assuming that he just wanted to get away from the surrounds of the busy pub, I followed him outside and noted the time. It was 8.50 pm.

  The gusting winds roared menacingly across the car park as we headed for his Montego. Hurricane K appeared to be with us at last.

  Opening the car door, he climbed inside, unlocked the passenger door and started the engine.

  He obviously wanted to go somewhere.

  Quickly grabbing a torch from my car, I pulled open the door, threw in my gear and leapt into the passenger seat, just as the car began to move away.

  Bernard said nothing. He would not even respond to my words as the vehicle turned right out of the car park and sped off down the road. He seemed strange, somnambulistic even. The car clock illuminated the time. It was now 8.57 pm.

  Coming to a junction, he slowed the car down. Momentarily he hesitated before turning left into a side road and then carrying on.

  Several hundred yards down the lane a T-junction loomed up ahead. Bringing the car to a halt, he paused for a moment as if getting his bearings, before making the decision to turn right.

  Still he said nothing.

  Where were we going? To the crossroads? He certainly appeared to be homing in on something. But what? To the left was open farmland stretching away to the south, and to the right were woods.

  Bernard then slowed down the car in the middle of the country road. Apparently realising we had gone past our destination, he unexpectedly put the vehicle in reverse and backtracked a short distance. Then, finding first gear, he turned the car into a recessed gateway and brought it to a halt.