Needless to say, it wasn’t a good idea to heed these instructions.
THE NAVKY
As if travelers didn’t have enough to fear from brigands and wild beasts, in Slavic lands they were also endangered by the spirits of children who had been murdered by their mothers, or died before baptism. Known as the navky, these spirits often took the shape of infants or young girls; rocking and weeping in the tree branches, they begged the travelers for baptism, or — if they were still angry at the living — tried to lure the travelers over cliffs, or into raging waters. In some lands, the navky were said to appear as great black birds whose loud cries could make the blood run cold.
THE UTBURD
In Norway, too, ghostly children assailed the living.
Infants who were born deformed, or sickly, or to a family that was simply incapable of feeding another mouth, were often abandoned. A rough grave was scraped in the snow, and the baby was left there to die of exposure. But that wasn’t always the end of its life. When one of these tiny souls returned as a ghost, it was known as an utburd — from the old Norse word for “a child carried outside.”
And though its earthly time had been short, this ghostly infant’s wrath could be long and extraordinary.
Its vengeance was directed first at its own mother, and according to legend, it could drift beneath a door, through a crack in a window, or down a chimney, as nothing more than a wisp of smoke. Then it could take the shape of a frozen, withered child, and attack with uncanny strength.
But the utburd’s rage extended to all mankind. It could maim or kill anyone unwise enough to pass by its tiny grave after dark. The cry it made was a lonely, mournful sound, and once it had set its sights on a victim, it could take on many different shapes and grow to immense Lucifer preparing some new evil. proportion. Any traveler who heard its call was advised to flee, and not even look back; the sight of the utburd was enough to freeze its quarry with terror. The ghost would come crashing out of the woods or down the road in hot pursuit. And the traveler had only two ways to save himself— by crossing a running stream, or producing something made of iron, usually a knife. If he could do neither, he would be grasped by the utburd, pulled to the ground, and crushed to pieces in its deadly embrace.
Lucifer preparing some new evil.
Denied such intimacy in life, the ghostly child took it in death.
THE POLTERGEIST
If all the denizens of the spirit world could be considered as one large (and hopelessly dysfunctional) family, then the poltergeist would undoubtedly be the youngest son — bursting with energy, prone to mischief, and utterly beyond control.
Making one of its earliest appearances in the Annales Fuldenses, an ancient German manuscript, a poltergeist (German for “noisy spirit”) is reported to have harassed a farmer near Bingen on the Rhine. First, it threw stones at his house, then it started to follow him around as he did his chores. Occasionally it set fire to something, and in an audible voice it denounced the poor man for his sins, and accused the village priest of indecent acts. Odd behavior though this may be, it is not uncommon procedure for the poltergeist.
Since then, poltergeists have made many and sundry appearances in the chronicles of the occult. In 1579, Girolamo Menghi wrote that a poltergeist had teased and annoyed a servant girl in Bologna, playing tricks on her and making rude noises. Peter Binsfeld, in 1589, said that a tenant should be allowed to break a lease if the premises were troubled by a poltergeist. And in his Jardin de las Floras Curiosas (1570), the Spanish writer Turrecremata told the story of a house in Salamanca where two beautiful young girls lived, along with a rollicking poltergeist. When the mayor and twenty men went to the house to rid it of its ghost, they were barraged with a hail of stones, and sent scurrying. When they renewed their attack, the stones flew again, but from no discernible hand. Finally, one of the men picked up one of the stones and threw it back inside the house, shouting, “if this came from you, O Devil, throw the same stone back at me.” The stone came back, and the immediate consensus was that unnatural forces were indeed at work.
In general, poltergeists are more of a nuisance than a danger. They delight in playing pranks — throwing dishes off tables, emitting sulphurous smells, slamming doors, pulling blankets from the bed. They are drawn to families with young children, and if the family happens to be that of a minister, so much the better. (See “The Epworth Poltergeist,” which follows.) They’re also given to hiding things, which then turn up, after much searching, in the most unlikely places — an inkwell in the butter churn, a key ring in the hayloft. For any household beset by a poltergeist, it’s a little like living with a hyperkinetic and invisible child — though sometimes, as with the family of the Reverend Wesley, they informally adopt it.
Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies.
THE EPWORTH POLTERGEIST
The Epworth Rectory, located in an English market town, was the home of the Reverend Samuel Wesley, his wife, and their ten children. It was a large, happy household, undisturbed until a cold December night in 1716, when the servants were roused by a loud knock on the door and the sound of someone groaning outside. Thinking it might be Mr. Turpine, an ailing neighbor who sometimes stopped at the rectory, the servants opened the door. But it wasn’t Mr. Turpine; indeed, it was no one at all. Puzzled, the servants went back to their tea, when the knocking came again — only much louder and more insistent this time. Again, they opened the door to find no one outside. The tea having lost some of its savor by now, the servants firmly bolted the door and decided to go to bed.
It was while the manservant was climbing the stairs, candle in hand, that he noticed his own shadow etched against the wall with a startling brightness. Then he heard a strange noise from the kitchen. Crouching down and peering through the balusters, he saw the iron hand mill, used to grind grain, grinding away on the kitchen table — but with no one turning its handle. Electing not to investigate any further, he raced up the stairs and jumped into bed.
From that night on, the Epworth rectory was bedeviled by the poltergeist. Sometimes it rattled the door latches and banged on the windows, sometimes it swept through a room with the sound of swishing petticoats, sometimes it gobbled like a turkey in the dark. The reverend himself tried to reason with it, asking it one night “what it was and why it disturbed innocent children and did not come to me in my study, if it had anything to say to me.” The only reply he got was a knock on the outside of the house.
Mrs. Wesley had only slightly better luck. Tracking the noises to the nursery one day, she went inside, and the room immediately fell silent. But she felt that something was still in the room with her. On an impulse, she bent down to look under the bed of one of her daughters, and something small and swift —”much like a badger,” as she wrote in one of her letters — scurried out, too fast for her to see or catch it.
Over the next several weeks, the family gradually grew so used to the poltergeist’s shenanigans, and so weary of trying to exorcise it, that they gave it a name — “Old Jeffrey,” after a previous tenant of the rectory who had died there — and learned to accommodate it in their daily schedule. Mrs. Wesley announced that she was under no circumstances to be disturbed between five and six o’clock, when she was offering her evening prayers — and the poltergeist obeyed. The children took to playing with it; as soon as it manifested itself in any particular part of the house, the children rushed at the spot, arms outstretched, hoping to grab it before it disappeared again.
Perhaps they eventually wore out even the ghost. A couple of months after it had rapped at the door, the poltergeist made its last audible appearance, just after the family had said its devotions. There were “two soft strokes,” Wesley recorded, “at the morning prayers for King George, above stairs.” And then, as unexpectedly as he had come, the Epworth Poltergeist — Old Jeffrey — went away. “As for the noises, etc. in our family,” the reverend wrote, “I thank God we are now all quiet.”
HOMEBODIES
Though ghos
ts have been known to appear almost anywhere, on mountain crags and tramp steamers, in coal mines and train stations, they show, like the poltergeist, a marked propensity for home. Sometimes it’s because it was there they died — perhaps under violent circumstances — and they cannot leave, as it were, the scene of the crime. Sometimes it’s because they feel compelled to reveal the mystery of their death to someone still living. And sometimes ghosts still haunt their homes because it was the only place they knew true happiness, and they cannot, even in death, tear themselves away. (The very word “haunt” originally meant “to fetch home.”) There are a thousand such stories, of homebody ghosts, but those that follow make the point quite well.
HOUSE TO LET
Inexpensive rentals have been sought after as long as there have been people seeking shelter, but exceptionally good deals have always been hard to come by. Even in ancient Athens.
The philosopher Athenodorus, on a visit there, came upon a large and impressive house, being offered for lease at a remarkably low rate. Wondering why, he made inquiries around the neighborhood and soon found out the reason: everyone who had tried to live there had been frightened away by the ghost of a filthy, skeletal man. Around his bony legs and arms the ghost wore clanking chains, caked with rust and dirt. One encounter with him, and most of the tenants were out the door.
But Athenodorus couldn’t resist the challenge. He rented the place, then sat up late, waiting for the ghost. He was not disappointed. The spectre appeared, rattling his iron fetters, but Athenodorus stood his ground. The ghost then beckoned to him, as if to say, “Follow me.” Athenodorus followed, and the ghost dragged his chains into the courtyard, where it stopped, turned, and suddenly disappeared.
Having marked the spot well, Athenodorus prevailed upon the city magistrates the next day to have the stones dug up, and the earth beneath them explored. There, according to the account given by Pliny the Younger, “they found bones, twisted round with chains, which were left bare and corroded by the fetters when time and the action of the soil had rotted away the body.” The bones were gathered up and given a proper burial, and the ghost no longer haunted the house. (Though history does not record it, the landlord no doubt doubled the rent.)
THE GHOST OF BURTON AGNES HALL
Anne Griffith, a young woman living in the reign of Elizabeth I, grew up in the great manor house of Burton Agnes Hall. It was there, in Yorkshire, that she played games with her sisters, received her suitors, came of age — and it was there, of an unknown disease, that she died young. On her deathbed, in the presence of the vicar, she made her sisters swear a solemn promise: her head, she said, was to be severed from her body and kept in the manor house always. Her sisters agreed to her strange request but, thinking she was mad with fever, did not honor it after her death. Her body, head still attached, was laid to rest beneath a bed of flowers in the family tomb.
For several days the house was quiet, steeped in mourning — until one night when the halls echoed with the sound of hollow grief and laughter. The men of the house piled out of bed, drew their swords, and searched everywhere for the source of the unearthly noise, but they could find nothing. Nor did they have any better luck the next night, when the terrifying screams, the agonized moans, began again. The whole house seemed to be filled with the doleful wailing, and at their wits’ ends, the sisters hurried to the vicarage to see what could be done.
The vicar, remembering the deathbed request, advised the sisters to open the tomb. Reluctantly, they did so; with torches lighted, they descended into the cold stone vault, opened Anne’s coffin, and to their horror found that the corpse had already begun their work for them: the head had separated itself from the body, shed itself of flesh, and was now propped upright on its jaws, empty eye sockets staring blankly. It all but asked to be taken inside. Dutifully, the sisters carried the skull back into the manor house with them and placed it with great care in the salon, in the center of the table. And for years, it stayed there, keeping a grisly watch on the doings of the now untroubled house.
The house might have remained untroubled, too, if it weren’t for the attentions of a too fastidious scullery maid. Thinking that the awful thing had long since outlived its usefulness, she snatched it up one day and tossed it into the back of a passing cabbage cart. Instantly, the cart jolted to a stop, the driver nearly toppling from his seat. He checked his wheels, he lashed his horse, but nothing would make the cart move. Eventually, his cursing brought the master of the house outside to see what was causing all the ruckus.
It was then that the maid confessed to what she’d done. When the master demanded that she retrieve the skull, she blanched and swore she would not dare to touch the thing again. A young man, a member of the family, did the job for her — and the moment he did, the cart bolted forward. The skull was put back where it belonged, and order was once again restored to Burton Agnes Hall.
Many years later, the family of Anne Griffith gave up possession of the house, and a new family moved in. The first thing to go, of course, was that awful relic sitting on the salon table. A servant was told to bury it in the garden. But he had no sooner smoothed the dirt over it than the house shook again with the ghastly screams. All night long the newcomers shivered in their beds, held their hands over their ears, and probed the shadows for the source of the terrible sounds. In the morning, they found their horses had gone lame, and the garden was blackened by a late frost.
An old servant, one who knew the house and its legend well, took a spade and tromped out into the garden. He found the spot where the skull had been buried and dug it up again. Brushing the dirt away, he brought it back inside the manor house. Without asking anyone’s leave, he put it back in its accustomed place on the salon table, and the hall grew quiet again.
By all accounts, no one has dared to move it since.
THE VANISHED BRIDE
In another stately English home, another young woman haunted the corridors and bedchambers. The house was Marwell Hall, near Owlesbury in Hampshire, and the ghost was that of a lovely young bride. Years before, on her wedding day, she had enticed her guests into a game of hide-and-seek. Full of wine and high spirits, they had run wild about the house and grounds, secreting themselves in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. Hours later, when the game was done, everyone had been found but the bride herself.
A concerted search was mounted, but the house was huge and rambling, the grounds were extensive, and after hours of looking she had still not been discovered. No one knew quite what to do. The guests quietly left for their own homes, the groom wept for his lost bride, and the house was closed up for the night.
Her death only became apparent on subsequent nights, when her ghost — still in her wedding gown — began to roam the corridors at night, fumbling at locks, rustling bed curtains, playing perhaps at hide-and-seek. For years, the ghostly presence haunted the house, until a maid ventured one day into one of the dusty attics of the house. There she saw an oaken chest, firmly locked, and wondered what was inside. After something of a struggle, she pried it open, and stepped back in shock. Inside it lay a skeleton, still wrapped in wedding clothes. The bride, it seems, had been too good at the game; she had hidden herself in a chest that had accidentally closed — and latched. Her remains discovered and her fate made known, the bride of Marwell Hall was released from her earthly bondage. From that day forward, she haunted the house no more.
THE TOWER
If ever there was a place that begged to be haunted, that place must surely be the Tower of London — the stone fortress, rising above the river Thames, where the English monarchy has for centuries imprisoned and executed its real, and perceived, enemies.
Many ghosts, indeed, are said to wander its halls.
Lady Jane Grey is one; sometimes called the Nine Days’ Queen, she was only seventeen in 1554 when she was imprisoned and beheaded on the Tower green.
Sir Walter Raleigh is another — he lived there for thirteen years, before James I, convinced he was plot
ting against the Throne, sent him, too, to the block in 1618.
The two Plantagenet princes, Edward and Richard, had many times been seen wandering the corridors, hand in hand. It was long thought that their uncle, later Richard III, had had them murdered there in 1483. But it wasn’t until the seventeenth century that the skeletons of two small boys were unearthed near the Bloody Tower. Once their bones had been interred in Westminster Abbey, the spirits of the young princes disappeared.
Perhaps the most famous ghost to haunt the Tower of London is that of Anne Boleyn. Second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I, she was charged with adultery and incest (though in all probability her only ?????e crime was that Henry had grown bored with her) and sentenced to be executed. On the bright morning of May 19, 1536, she dressed in a damask gown, a red petticoat, and a pearl headdress. (Surprised at her spritely demeanor, the Governor of the Tower declared, “This lady has much joy and pleasure in death.”) And because, as she said, she had “a little, little neck,” she was granted a special favor: instead of being decapitated by a clumsy Englishman with an axe, she was provided with a skilled Frenchman, able to do the job with a sword. When he’d finished, the headless body was stuffed into an arrow case and buried under the stones of the Tower chapel, St. Peter ad Vincula.
But it did not rest there. Many times she was seen where the block had once stood, or roaming the grounds of the Tower keep. One sentry reportedly died of fright; another fainted when the headless ghost approached, then walked right through him. In the 1800s, an officer of the guard took notice of a strange, soft, and unaccountable light filling the windows of the locked chapel. When he put a ladder up to the window to peer inside, he nearly fell from his perch in terror.
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