The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  The Ghost of “Leathery Colt”

  Source and date: Halifax Courier, 12 July 1915

  One night in the month of January, a man and a woman were returning home about midnight from the house of a sick relative and, just as they reached the spot where the Railway Hotel now stands, there came a gust of wind and “Leathery Colt” and his dreadful horses darted by while they clung to each other in terror. Neither had heard the legend of the traveller named “Leathery Colt” who had been brutally murdered many years before at The Fleece in Elland and his body hidden in the cellar. Thereafter, it was said, on certain midnights, a travelling carriage with headless horses and a headless coachman would drive furiously along Westgate, the spectral vision accompanied by a sudden rush of wind and the terrified cries of those who saw it, “There goes Leathery Colt!”

  Phantom Vehicle

  Source and date: Kent Messenger, 12 March 1915

  After accounts circulated last week of a phantom vehicle being seen by Colonel Leland of The Clearing, Hawkhurst, and his chauffeur, the Colonel has kindly supplied us with an account of his experience: “I had to go back to the Depot to do some work after dinner, about 9 p.m. My own car, allotted to me by the WD, and my driver, Webber, a soldier, were waiting for me, and I left the house a few minutes after nine. We had gone two or three hundred yards when I noticed a moving light on my left; concluding that it was a horse-driven vehicle coming into our road. I told Webber to slow down and let it come ahead. This was done and the vehicle, which was very indistinct, drew in and turned the way we were going. I told Webber to go up behind it and not pass. He did so and we kept close behind it for about two hundred yards. I could plainly see the back of the vehicle, which was black and appeared to be a hearse; it was moving at a trot. The queer part was I could see no driver and the two panels at the back and the keyhole for locking the doors showed up most distinctly under the rays of our lamps. When he got around a corner, I said to Webber, ‘Push on.’ We did so and the road before us was empty. We accelerated but there was nothing to be seen and Webber said, ‘Lord, sir, what was that?’ We went down and around Sunbury but did not see any vehicle. I can assure you that the vehicle, whatever it was, only rounded the corner a few yards ahead of us and there was nowhere it could have gone.”

  Phonographic Record of Ghosts

  Source and date: Light, 7 August 1915

  In June an experiment was carried out by Dr W J Crawford in which he took phonograph records of the rap s, bell-ringing and other sounds produced at the séances for the physical phenomena which he is investigating. On Thursday, Mr Horace Leaf, who has recently visited Ireland, called upon us with one of the records kindly sent by Dr Crawford, and this was tested on a phonograph – the various sounds (with the exception of the bell-ringing, which was very faint) being clearly audible. Dr Crawford has proved to the satisfaction of himself and his fellow-investigators that the noises produced are objective sounds and not the result of collective hallucination – an important matter to the scientific investigator who desires to check his result at every step.

  A Ghostly Picture

  Source and date: Sunday Times, 20 February 1916

  A strange story is told concerning the funeral of a Grenadier Guardsman named Jonathan Owen in the mining village of Risea, Monmouthshire. The soldier came home wounded from France and died recently at Harrogate. He was buried in the cemetery of his native village in the same grave as his little daughter who had just predeceased him. After the funeral, the relatives thought they would like a photograph of the grave, which was abundantly embowered in foliage and flowers. Then an amazing thing happened. When the plate was developed the photograph revealed the faces of Owen and his little girl looking out from the foliage. They are both, it is stated, plainly visible and the resemblance is convincing. This mystifying incident has created great excitement throughout the district and is being investigated by spiritualists and those interested in psychical research. [Among those who studied the photograph was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote later, “I myself investigated this matter and have found the facts to be as stated.”]

  Fiery Outbreaks at Swanton Rectory

  Source and date: The Times, 30 August 1919

  A series of mysterious disturbances have occurred at the Rectory of Swanton Novers, near Melton Constable, our correspondent writes. These phenomena have included spontaneous outbreaks of fire; petrol, paraffin, methylated spirits, sandalwood oil and water pouring from the ceiling; floorboards torn up and ceilings torn down, etc. The manifestations lasted for days and the fifteen-year-old maidservant was at first suspected of hoaxing the family. However, she denied this and the Rector has ventured the opinion that the disturbances had a supernatural origin. Nevil Maskelyne, the famous illusionist, also visited the Rectory and saw “barrels of oil” pouring through the ceiling. He could not explain the mystery.

  1920–29

  The Secret of the Skeleton

  Source and date: The Scotsman, 14 May 1920

  The completion of renovations to Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire may have lain to rest the famous “Green Lady Ghost” who has haunted the ancient building for centuries. The legend of the ghostly figure claims that she appears in the corridor near the “ghost room” and disappears through the panels of a dark, wainscoted apartment. When a large fungus began to grow recently in the gunroom, Lord Leith put masons and carpenters to work on restoration. During their labours, the men were horrified to discover a complete skeleton. According to reports, this discovery immediately gave rise to a number of psychic disturbances in the castle and the “Green Lady Ghost” was again seen wandering silently. Lord Leith gave instructions for the bones to be re-interred in the wall and the disturbances have ceased, our correspondent has been informed.

  Ghostly Evidence of Murder

  Source and date: Daily News Record, 26 January 1921

  A man has been arrested in Philadelphia and charged with murder in consequence of a ghostly vision. Some time ago, a Mr Freeman, an engineer in the city, found one morning the dead body of his daughter lying on a couch in the drawing room. She was shot through the head. There was no clue to the crime. But, last Monday, Mr Freeman was visiting his daughter’s grave. The dead girl, he declares, appeared to him in a vision and uttered the words, “Father, go and see Edwin King. He can tell you everything.” King was arrested on Tuesday and charged with murder.

  Another Dartmoor Phantom?

  Source and date: Western Daily Press, 9 October 1921

  Dartmoor may have a real-life phantom to match the ghostly dog, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in Sir Arthur Conan Doyles classic Sherlock Holmes adventure. In June, a medical officer at Dartmoor Prison was riding his motorcycle across a wild moorland road from Two Bridges to Postbridge. He had two children in the sidecar and as he drove down towards the bridge crossing the East Dart he suddenly shouted to the children to jump clear. They managed to scramble clear as the motorcycle swerved off the road and was smashed to pieces. The doctor was killed instantly. Last week, another motorcyclist was riding home on the same road. He arrived in a dazed condition and his motorcycle badly damaged. Requesting that his name was not published but insisting his story was true, the man told our reporter, “As I drove down the hill I felt a pair of rough, hairy hands close over my own on the handlebars. They dragged me off the road. I remember nothing after that until I regained consciousness and found I was lying very close to the spot where the doctor had died.” [Since this report there have been several more stories about encounters with the phantom “Hairy Hands” on Dartmoor – including a similar accident to a motorcyclist in the winter of 1974.]

  Ghost Moves a Piano

  Source and date: Pall Mall Gazette, 17 February 1923

  The Cambridgeshire village of Gorefield, a few miles from Wisbech, is disturbed by the activities of a ghostly agency in the house of a well-known resident. Accounts circulated of the happenings in the house have brought people from far and near, anxious to get further pa
rticulars and test the truth of the reports. It is stated that furniture is moved and ornaments dashed to the ground, and if articles are restored to their right places they are quickly upset again. Since Monday last the house has been in complete disorder, the repetition of the mischievous doings having induced the occupants to take the attitude that it is useless to restore articles to their proper places, as the ghost is thereby incited to greater assiduity in upsetting them. Heavy articles of furniture, including a piano, have been moved several feet; a gramophone, standing on a small table at one end of the room, was mysteriously moved to a large table in the centre of the apartment; crockery in the pantry has been thrown down and smashed; while a small table in the kitchen has been seen turning round on the floor, and part of a washstand in a bedroom has been seen flying over the bed. The disturbances occur at all hours of the day and night.

  The Farm of Spooks

  Source and date: Warwickshire Advertiser, 14 April 1923

  The village of Fenny Compton, near Banbury, has been attracting crowds of curiosity seekers during the past weeks anxious to see the “ghostly lights”. They have all been heading for a deserted farmhouse which has been nicknamed “The Farm of Spooks”. There, it is said, crowds of several hundred have watched with awe on certain evenings as strange lights have danced around the property. The lights are believed to be will-o’-the-wisps, although the reason for their continued appearance has not yet been determined. [In October 1994, the East Anglian Daily Times announced that two University of East Anglia scientists, John Green and Peter Brimblecombe, were carrying out experiments to try and photograph these ghostly lights to establish whether burning marsh gases caused them. Dr Green told the paper, “Will-o’-the-wisps were often reported in the old days, but modern reports are few and far between and it may be that people these days are more reticent to talk about them.”]

  Phantom Ship Off Cape Town

  Source and date: Manchester Guardian, 19 October 1925

  A correspondent has sent us this remarkable account of the sighting of a ghost ship off the coast of South Africa. Mr N K Stone was the 4th Officer on the P&O Liner SS Barrabool sailing from Australia to London. On 26 January of this year, after leaving Cape Town, Mr Stone was on watch from midnight assisting 2nd Officer Mr C C West. He told our correspondent: “About 0.15 a.m. we noticed a strange light on the port bow. We looked at this through binoculars and the ship’s telescope and made out what appeared to be the hull of a ship, luminous, with two distinct masts carrying bare yards, also luminous. There were no sails visible, but there was a luminous haze between the masts. There were no navigation lights and she appeared to be coming closer to us and at the same speed as ourselves. When first sighted she was about two to three miles away and when within about half a mile of us she suddenly disappeared. There were four witnesses to this spectacle, the 2nd Officer, a cadet, the helmsman and myself. I shall never forget the 2nd Officer’s startled expression, “My god, Stone, it’s a ghost ship.” I drew a sketch of this strange ship afterwards and many people who have seen it wonder if she was the Flying Dutchman we saw that night.

  The Flying Dutchman by André Castaigne, Century Magazine, July 1904.

  A Phantom Army

  Source and date: The Times, 2 August 1926

  In a letter to The Times, Frances Balfour of Inverary submitted a document written by his father about a “ghostly vision” seen near Glen Aray in June. His father and grandfather were returning home and were nearing Garran Bridge when they were surprised to see a vast number of soldiers coming towards them. “This extraordinary sight, which was wholly unexpected, so much attracted their attention that they stood a considerable time to observe it. The army continued to advance and they counted that it had fifteen or sixteen pairs of colours, and they observed that the men nearest to them were marching upon the road six or seven abreast attended by a number of women and children some of whom were carrying tin cans and other implements of cookery. They were clothed in red and the sun shone so bright that the gleam of their arms consisting of muskets and bayonets dazzled their sight. My grandfather who had served with the Argyllshire Highlanders was mystified by the dress of the army and supposed it had come from Ireland. He observed that only one person was mounted on a grey dragoon horse and considered him the Commander-in-Chief. He had on a gold-laced hat and a blue hussar cloak, with wide-open loose sleeves, all lined in red. Their curiosity now satisfied, the two men thought it high time to provide for their security against being taken along by the force and climbed over a dyke. When they looked back to observe the motions of the army, they found to their astonishment that they were all vanished, not a soul of them was to be seen! No one has been able to explain this vision and no person to whom my father and grandfather told it doubted that they told anything but the truth.

  The Poltergeist Girl

  Source and date: Daily News, 12 October 1926

  The news stories that a thirteen-year-old Rumanian girl, Eleanore Zugun, who was the target of attacks by an invisible spirit that had thrown objects at her and bitten her arm, had been brought to London for tests at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research in London, prompted this leading article by a writer who had been present: “If there is one thing about the poltergeist girl that is beyond dispute it is the fact that she is responsible in some way for the uncanny manifestations. Things are wafted away in her presence, she is bitten by unseen teeth, her face becomes scarred and disfigured, stilettos fly across her room. The suggestion that she is possessed of evil spirits is unsatisfactory and certainly unscientific. The temptation to believe that these phenomena are produced by trickery is obvious. Yet it must be remembered that these ‘stigmata’ have appeared not in a darkened room before the credulous, but in a laboratory of psychical research in South Kensington, before men expert in tracing every form of conscious deception or complex hysteria. The genuine character both of the markings on her flesh and the movement of the articles in her room have survived the most searching tests. Altogether the eccentricities of the poltergeist girl have proved one of the most bewildering problems, both psychical and psychological, of this generation.” [Harry Price, who was one of the team who carried out the tests on the girl, claimed later, “It was not until I brought Eleanore Zugun to London in 1926 that the word ‘poltergeist’ became common in the British Press.”]

  Ghost of Fred Archer

  Source and date: East Anglian Daily Times, 12 April 1927

  A mother and her daughter walking near Hamilton Stud Lane in Newmarket saw the ghost of the great jockey Fred Archer on one of his famous grey horses at the weekend. Mrs Elsie Jarrett and her teenager daughter, Mary, were out for a walk on Saturday morning when a horse and rider emerged silently from a copse of trees and galloped towards them. Just as the horse neared them, it vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared. Mrs Jarrett, who had seen Archer ride on a number of occasions in Newmarket, saw the features of the rider quite distinctly and was in no doubt that it was the jockey – although he died almost forty years ago. Mary confirmed her mother’s story and said she also recognized the face of the man who had won the Derby five times. This is not the first time Archer mounted on a phantom horse has been reported in the Newmarket area. His ghost is said to have been responsible for a number of unexplained mishaps on the Newmarket Course in recent years.

  A Living Woman’s Ghost

  Source and date: Daily Express, 21 December 1928

  The Shropshire village of Northwood is in a state of excitement over a series of mysterious nightly visitations. Stories are told of a woman’s figure, which has been seen by several people, all of whom agreed that she is dressed in sombre clothing, as distinguished from orthodox ghostly habitments; and is the image of a local farmer’s wife who lives in the neighbourhood. A farmer named Morris and a workman named Peate were returning homeward one night with a horse and trap when they saw the woman and stopped the horse with the view of giving her a “lift” as they knew her well. She disappeared suddenly
and although the men actually got out of the trap and searched for her she was not to be found. Two nights later Mr Morris saw her again. Mr Arthur Ellis, a wireless factor, was driving his car in the same district and distinctly saw the woman, whom he knows well. She was standing in the road and he jammed on the brakes and swerved to avoid her, pulled up, and found – nothing. This story is corroborated in every detail by a boy named George Bach who was in the car at the time. Many of the more adventurous spirits are prowling the roads at night and it seems that those who have deliberately gone out to watch have drawn a blank every time.