by Will Storr
Just then, Lance walks in with Natalie and Dane. They noisily beat the cold out of their clothes and Lance tells me that they had a short conversation, via the rods, with a spirit who claimed to be a Benedictine monk. ‘Even though,’ says Lance, curiously, ‘this was an Augustinian priory.’
I tell Lance about Lou Gentile’s uncompromising warning about divination. Does he agree that, in using dowsing rods, we might be dangerously meddling in dark sports?
‘It’s a difficult one, that,’ he says as he sits down next to me. ‘I, personally, would not use a Ouija board. I can’t explain why I draw that line other than the fact that, yes, you are in more direct contact with a spirit.’
‘Can we be sure it’s a spirit, though?’ I ask, and I tell him about my experiment with the rods.
‘Well, there is some evidence that using a pendulum is picking up on small motor movements generated by the subconscious, and in the same way, I suppose divining rods could be picking up on … well, yes, a presence, but not actually a possessive one.’
‘Have you ever been scared?’ I ask him.
‘No,’ he says immediately, ‘I haven’t. The closest thing I’ve come to being scared is at a pub in Buckinghamshire where we heard a strange snuffling sound.’
‘What was it?’ I ask.
‘It turned out to be a hedgehog.’
I look at Lance. ‘So in all these years, in all these haunted places, you’ve never once been frightened?’
‘It’s possibly because I’m too mundane,’ he says, with a sad shrug. ‘I don’t think I pose a threat to a ghost. The only one I’ve ever seen is my cat, Emily. I saw her in my kitchen when she was at the vet’s, being put down. That wasn’t full of signs and portents, but I know what I saw and I saw that cat.’
Lance tells me that there are four main types of ghost. There are replay hauntings – disembodied footsteps on stairs or white ladies in lakes that just do what they do over and over again. There are crisis apparitions – visions of loved ones mysteriously appearing at the time of their death. Then, there are ghosts with a purpose, who come back in order to deal with business left unfinished during their lifetime. And then there are polts.
‘Polts?’
‘Poltergeists. They seem to be people-centred.’
‘How do you think I should go about finding out about poltergeists?’ I ask.
‘Well, obviously, you should see if Maurice Grosse is willing to talk to you,’ he says.
‘Maurice who?’
‘You’ve not heard of Maurice Grosse?’ says Lance, his curiosity almost popping. ‘Well, I strongly recommend that you interview him. He’s in his eighties now, a scientist by background and probably our most distinguished living investigator of polts. Have you heard of the Enfield poltergeist case?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I have. A demonologist told me about it.’
‘Well, Maurice rigorously investigated that case, and witnessed it first-hand. You know,’ Lance says, settling into his subject, ‘it’s always occurred to me that, given nature works within an economic framework, it doesn’t seem economic or reasonable that people spend their lives gaining wisdom and having the rough edges knocked off them and then, just because of a physical flaw, that mental progress is lost.’
No, I think, I suppose it doesn’t. What’s the point of life if it just ends? Why would nature do that to itself?
‘Another one of the interesting things about ghosts is that I can’t think of any other phenomenon which is so consistent across time, class and cultures. The surveys the Society for Psychical Research – the SPR – carried out in the 1880s were finding that a third of the population believed in ghosts, about a third were agnostic and a third were strongly sceptical. That was 125 years ago, and it hasn’t changed much. I’ve been on courses with senior civil servants and those proportions hold good there. I just find that very fascinating.’
Whilst he’s talking, it strikes me that Lance is one of the most exactingly rational men that I have ever met. In fact, his rationality is his defining characteristic. It’s evident in every word that he says, every expression on his face, every meticulous note that he makes in his Ghost Club Event Log. And yet, many people would ridicule his fascination with the paranormal. They’d listen to his tale about Emily the ghost cat, and wink and whisper and snigger out of shot. They’d say he was mental, and when I’d insist that he wasn’t, they’d conclude that he was lying.
Usually, when I talk about my experiences with Lou Gentile, sceptical types tell me that I was hoaxed. But I don’t buy that. And not only because I was impressed with the witnesses and the evidence. Lou Gentile, I’m sure, is convinced of the truth of what he says.
As are the people I’ve met tonight. Why would Tuckett invent stories about a weather system in his bedroom? Bearing in mind that Michelham doesn’t promote itself as a ‘haunted’ tourist attraction, and that Tuckett still stubbornly refuses to believe in ghosts. Why would Lance try to bamboozle me with a yarn about Emily, the spectral cat?
I don’t believe that the world is full of cunning and convincing tricksters who are armed with rewired tape recorders, smoke machines, apparition projectors and hidden tornado turbines. It just doesn’t add up that, for generations, thousands of clever people have spent hours concocting tales and elaborate practical tricks to fool people just for … for what?
So, I have made a decision. Unless I have good reason to think that I am being given the sly one, I am always going to assume that the teller believes that they are telling me the truth. I don’t believe that the people I am going to be meeting – people who spend their spare time obsessing about and fiddling with the paranormal – would bother. And secondly, I just think I’ll be able to tell if somebody’s trying to cock me a nonsense.
So, if the people that I’ve met so far aren’t lying, then it means there might have been demonic faces and black shadows and shaking beds and an invisible force fucking with Christopher’s furniture. And if that lot’s been happening, I have to find out why and how because, really, the implications for me are stark and they are deafening. Because if there is something lurking behind the everyday, if there are hidden rules and dimensions to existence, then perhaps, I think, my days need to be lived more meticulously. Lou and the priests would have me believe that if I behave badly, I’m going to end up in hell. Before Philadelphia, I would have dismissed all that as superstitious nonsense. But, since then, my faith in the nature of nonsense has been radically shaken. And if they’re right, if there is an afterlife, and my actions now will have an impact on me for all eternity, then I really do need to know. And sharpish.
I look up. I am alone in the undercroft at just gone 3 a.m. After having found a very human answer to the divination question, I feel brave enough to have a wander around on my own.
As the winter sun has sunk, this place has gradually come to feel less like a polished tourist attraction and more like an extremely old house with a few bits of red rope draped about the place. Beyond the priory’s moat are ancient fields. They are small, with irregular boundaries marked by sinewy hedges, and they’re dotted with oak trees so old they appear to have developed their own personalities. The roads we drove in on are the same winding tracks that have linked the houses, farms and the outlying villages of Herstmonceaux, Horsebridge and Abbot’s Wood for many long and troubled centuries. They’re thin, ditch-lined and unlit and empty at night.
Inside the priory, as I walk around, are wood-panelled walls, exposed beams and austere paintings of grave men with hooded eyes and high-buttoned collars. These are the faces of Sir Thomas Sackville, John Foote, William Child and James Eglington Anderson Gwynne, the men who once inhabited these rooms, who ate roast pig and argued over these tables and regarded themselves in these mirrors and slept and died in these beds. It could be these faces that keep Christopher Tuckett awake in the night.
I creep up a wide set of stairs, turn a corner and pad past a ‘Michelham Through the Ages’ display. There are three more sta
irs and beyond that a large room. I walk in and, instantly, I’m spooked. Perhaps it’s the size of the space, the deep shadowed corners and looming, huge furniture. Or perhaps it’s the silence that the night seems to amplify. I take a few steps forward, as gently as possible, scared I might somehow provoke something lurking in the quiet. To my right are lead-latticed windows, which look out onto the shushing trees and lawns. Silhouettes of antique chests and cabinets line the walls guiltily, like a caught-in-the-act gang trying to keep undetected in the dark. I walk forwards. In front of me, I notice a beautiful oak chest. One of its drawers is sticking out. As the rest of the building is faultlessly immaculate, this strikes me as strange. I decide to pull the dowsing rods out of my back pocket for an idle test. I hook them over my fingers and walk towards the drawer. I take one step – nothing. Another step – nothing. Another step – nothing. And then, just as the rods cover the open drawer, they tear across each other. One of them actually spins right round and stops only when it touches my jumper. It was nothing like what happened in the gatehouse. It had real, independent force.
‘Shit!’ I shout and pelt back down the stairs.
I shouldn’t be this jumpy, I think, crossly, as I sit in the safe, bright undercroft and dry my palms on my trousers. It appears that I might have dismissed dowsing a little hastily.
Ten minutes later, I’ve managed to persuade Lance and Paolo away from examining a cold spot of air in the kitchen. They’ve agreed to offer me a second opinion. We enter the room behind Paolo, whose long rods are poised, sniffing the dark air like the feelers of a giant robot ant.
‘There’s something in here,’ says Paolo, ‘there’s definitely something in here.’
He creeps forward with Lance and me two steps behind.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
Paolo remains silent. He stops beside a velvet-covered chair.
‘I can sense you are standing right behind me,’ he says to the room. ‘If that’s the case, would you please cross the rods.’
‘I think it’s trying to cross slightly,’ says Lance. ‘It’s now crossing.’
‘OK,’ says Paolo to the spirit. ‘Thank you. Your presence is very strong and we need to talk to you. Is there anything you would like to say to us?’
‘I feel sick,’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ says Paolo, ‘you know when it’s a yes because you feel a surge.’
‘What do you think the surge means?’ I say.
‘I’ve got a feeling it’s “fuck off”, actually. Oh,’ says Paolo, suddenly looking even more pale, ‘I find it so hard to do questions. Lance, would you talk to it?’
‘Did you live here?’ says Lance. ‘Were you a resident of Michelham Priory? If so, please cross the rods.’
Again, they pull together over Paolo’s hands in a grand, swooping movement.
‘Are you feeling a real rage, yeah?’ Paolo asks me, ‘like it really wants to have a go at us?’
‘I can feel it up my back,’ I say.
‘Did you die here at Michelham? Are you dead? If you’re dead, could you please cross the rods?’
Lance and I are standing close to Paolo at the edge of the empty room. We’re all staring at the rods, which are illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through one of the thin windows. They quiver slightly with Paolo’s heartbeat. And then they cross. He shakes them back to open with a well-practised flick.
‘Are you angry with us?’ says Lance.
The rods swing together again.
‘He’s livid with us, yeah,’ Paolo says. ‘If you give us ten minutes of your time, we’ll leave you in peace. Would that be OK?’
They cross again and Paolo resets them, quickly.
‘Would somebody please make note of the time? I’m going to have to keep my promise.’
‘It’s three forty-one,’ says Lance. He clears his throat and addresses the ghost. ‘Are you Sir Thomas Sackville O’ Dorset? Chancellor of the University of Oxford? Are you that true and puissant knight?’’
‘Look at that,’ whispers Paolo, as they cross again. ‘It’s right-handed, this ghost.’
‘I’m getting weird sensations in my head, twitching and that,’ I say.
‘Yeah, I’m getting that,’ says Paolo. ‘It wants to smack us, basically. It’s saying, “How dare you?”’
‘Sir Thomas,’ says Lance, ‘how many other beings whom we cannot see are here with us? Is it three other beings in the building with us? … Is it four other beings in the building with us? … Is it two other beings in the building with us? Thank you, Sir Thomas. Is one of those beings a little girl? Thank you, Sir Thomas. Was it you who opened the drawer to Paolo’s left?’
‘I feel really sick,’ Paolo says, his rods drooping, ‘I want to get out of this room. I can’t cope any more.’
‘God,’ I say, backing towards the door, ‘have we really fucked Sir Thomas off?’
‘Yes,’ says Lance, as we briskly exit, ‘and almost certainly the last person to do that was Queen Elizabeth I.’
To: Tim Laverty
From: Will Storr
Subject: Michelham Priory
Hi Tim
I wonder if you can help me. I am currently doing some research into ghosts. I was on the Internet doing some research about Michelham Priory and I came across your appeal for information in a chat-room, following the events that took place during a school outing at the priory. I was wondering if you could fill me in on exactly what happened?
Many thanks.
Will Storr
To: Will Storr
From: Tim Laverty
Subject: Michelham Priory
Hello Will,
Thanks for your email. Of course I’d be happy to let you know what happened.
I’m a member of teaching staff at a secondary school near Lewes in Sussex. Last Wednesday we took a bunch of students out to Michelham Priory. All in all, it was quite an odd school trip. A number of kids reported paranormal phenomena, including:
• Cold spots (at the foot of the stairs and in the Prior’s Chamber).
• Stones being dropped onto the centre of the floor in one of the upper rooms, from no apparent source (I witnessed this, too).
• A very distinct noise of sneezing from the empty nursery.
• Sudden feelings of nausea in the top room at the gatehouse, which disappeared when they moved from the room.
• A kid being tapped on the shoulder by an invisible source in the barn (he nearly leapt out of his skin).
• Another kid hearing the names Mary, Elizabeth and Rosemary spoken in the nursery (no one else heard this, but he was insistent).
I brought along a Dictaphone, with which I recorded the tour on the upper floors, and on playing back the cassette tape immediately after the tour, there are three shouts of either “No” or “Whoa” recorded in the Prior’s Chamber, and what sounds like five screams, possibly that of a young girl, recorded in the upstairs music room, adjoining the nursery.
Of all this, it’s the tape recordings which seem to be the most significant. The kids, in small groups, were all remarkably well behaved and there was no shouting or screaming going on in the room at the time, and this was confirmed by the tour guide and other staff members. The recordings are quite disturbing; staff who asked to listen to them later were visibly shaken. I’ve made a rough copy for the school to use, and the Priory asked for a copy which can be added to their archives. Hope that’s of some use.
Tim Laverty
2
‘It’s not all coming from the trees’
WHAT IF I’VE been wrong about everything? What if everybody’s lives aren’t, as I’d thought, like eighty-year-long films, where everyone plays their own hero and fades to black in the end? What’s looking increasingly unlikely to me is the idea that the only world that exists is the one that we can see in front of us. Because there have now been two occasions when I’ve set out to find ghostly phenomena. And both times, I have found it. That’s a 100 per cent hit rate.
&nb
sp; Where, I keep wondering, will this search lead me? Could it be taking me, in a very circuitous route, back to church? I keep getting a flashback to a three-second sliver of an event that happened a few years ago. I was having a meal at my parents’ house when my mum proudly passed comment about how spiritual her family was. Quietly, I murmured between mouthfuls that I wasn’t spiritual. Not at all. Even when I’ve been lost in my darkest, most desolate acres, I’ve never felt the presence of God or even been tempted to look for it. But Mother knows best. So when I said it – I’m not spiritual – she gave me a self-assured, beatific smile and announced, ‘Oh you will be. You will be.’
At the time, at the table, I was silently furious. But maybe she was right. Maybe this is the beginning of a spiritual journey, one that will kidnap my rational self and drag it off to church for confession. Because, for a lapsed Catholic like me, you can’t just decide to believe in ghosts and leave it at that. Because if ghosts exist, and they have intelligence, then the ramifications are vast and they are terrifying. Because it means there is an afterlife. And that is hard evidence that I could have been rash in my lapsing.
The afterlife – the concept of heaven and hell – is at the very core of Christianity. The fear of damnation and lust for paradise is the twin-valve engine that drives the worldwide faithful. And, put simply, there either is an afterlife or there isn’t. To me, deciding that the afterlife does exist might be the most important decision I ever make. Because if heaven is a reality, and entry depends upon how you live your life – which becomes, in effect, one long moral assault course – then I need to start doing some exercise.
But it’s a little more complicated than that. Christians do believe in an afterlife, and ghosts may well turn out to be proof of that. But they also believe in the devil. And every good priest would agree with Lou Gentile that Kathy Ganiel wasn’t being haunted by any human spirit, but by a demon sent by Satan. A demon she opened her door to when she made the fearsome mistake of using divination.
