The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  Voices from a Hitchcock Nightmare

  Source and date: Chicago Daily News, 25 August 1985

  Every day was a nightmare for wealthy eighty-six-year-old Catherine Noordyke of Chicago. Crazy voices would babble in the pre-dawn darkness until in the end she thought she was going insane. Household objects such as cutlery, carpets and rugs would move on their own – as if by unseen hands. Things had begun to go bump in the night after she had married her younger lover, forty-nine-year-old dashing, six-foot tall Neal Faasen. Her once-happy life had become an Alfred Hitchcock nightmare after she began sharing all her worldly goods with her new husband. When Faasen finally dumped Catherine on a relative’s doorstep after the five-year marriage, she was penniless – minus a $1,500,000 fortune. “The poor lady was on the verge of cracking up,” said lawyer James Zerrenner in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “She really thought she was going mad.” In a court action now being brought by Catherine’s family, Faasen is accused of fraud. It is claimed that the objects were moved by translucent fishing lines and that Faasen hired people to whisper and laugh outside his wife’s bedroom window in a wicked plot to drive her insane.

  Haunt of the Dead

  Source and date: Sunday People, 3 November 1985

  The ghost of a man murdered by Tom Fool – who gave his name to the expression “tomfoolery” – has driven a landowner from his castle. Gordon Duff-Pennington is dogged by the footsteps of the murdered carpenter every time he passes the stables on Muncaster Castle, near Ravenglass, Cumbria, at night. Tom Fool Skelton, who managed Muncaster, killed the carpenter for bragging of an affair with the castle’s mistress. Mr Duff-Pennington is going to Scotland and leaving the castle to a relative.

  Anyone There in the Washing Machine?

  Source and date: Sunday Telegraph, 24 November 1985

  Psychical research at Edinburgh University is to try to find out whether there is anything paranormal at work when some machines work for certain people and refuse to work for others. According to Britain’s newly appointed first professor of parapsychology, American, Dr Robert Morris, these machines include television sets, computers, copiers and even telephones. They apparently break down for some people, but immediately work normally when used by others and he will seek to find out if paranormal reactions to machines could exist – and if so what form they might take. The new professorship is being funded by a £500,000 endowment left by the writer Arthur Koestler and his wife who died in 1983. Dr Morris said that he interpreted Koestler’s aims as investigating psychical phenomena rather than acting as advocate for them. “I think there is something to be learned, but I am quite sceptical of many claims.” He defined psychical experience as anomalous communication between people and their environment, not necessarily limited to telepathy or other well-recognized forms. Other proposed research includes identifying psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance and pre-cognition.

  Girl Ghost Ends Last Bus Trip

  Source and date: Sunday Express, 16 February 1986

  A Taiwan bus company near Tainan, 200 miles south of Taipei, has been forced to cancel the evening run to an isolated village because of a ghost. Passing through tall, shadowy sugar-cane fields, the driver picked up a young girl passenger, but by the time the bus journey ended the girl had vanished. The company’s other frightened drivers insisted a Taoist priest exorcize the haunted vehicle before it was used again.

  Verily I Am a Computer Spook

  Source and date: The Mail on Sunday, 29 December 1985

  Complicated modern technology is the latest plaything for ghosts. Or, at least, one very peculiar spirit who calls himself Thomas Harden and haunts the computer of economics teacher Ken Webster, living in the village of Doddleston in Cheshire. Oxford-educated Harden has been dead for more than 400 years, but that does not stop him enjoying a good session on a BBC Micro after a hard day’s toll. He calls the gadget a “leems boyste” – light box – or a “scrit devis” in the late Middle English of his time. Ken Webster believes the skills of the man who has haunted his computer for more than a year rather impressive and looks forward to the messages from the past that pop up on his monitor. These are mainly questions about the present day but also offering historical information that has proved interesting and correct. Ken Webster originally thought someone was playing a prank, but after 150 messages and establishing there was a Thomas Harden who was the Dean of Brasenose College Chapel at Oxford, he thinks otherwise. The Dean was apparently expelled for refusing to remove the Pope’s name from prayer books during Henry Vlll’s purge of Roman Catholicism. The Society for Psychical Research has investigated the case no fewer than eight times but remains sceptical. [In July 1988, another computer in Cheshire – an Amstrad PC 1512 in an architect’s office in Stockport – was also reported by The People to be haunted. A cleaner saw the screen glowing even though it was unplugged, other staff members noticed letters appearing on the screen when it was switched off, and a secretary was terrified when the machine “suddenly started to groan”. Experts from Personal Computer magazine, called in to investigate the claims, ran tests including focusing a video camera on the spooked machine for three months resulting in very similar effects. Leader Ken Hughes commented “I would not have believed it if I had not seen it myself. I am baffled.”]

  Trainer Decides Exorcism is Best Bet

  Source and date: The Times, 10 December 1986

  Mr Alex Whiting, a racehorse owner with fourteen horses in training at the St Claud Racing Stables at Costock, Nottinghamshire, could never understand why success had always eluded him at his local racecourse in Nottingham after twenty-four attempts. He had, after all, had winners at Catterick, Newmarket, Wolverhampton and Brighton, so it was unlikely that there was anything fundamentally wrong with the quality of his training. Mr Whiting finally decided that it must be the ghost of his Great Uncle Cyril whose ashes had been scattered on the Nottingham racecourse. The family cannot remember if the scattering was a gesture of celebration or desperation, but they do remember that Great Uncle Cyril, with almost his dying breath, forecast that none of his descendants would ever win at Nottingham. Great Uncle Cyril has proved depressingly right, although Mr Whiting came close last month when his horse, Taylor’s Renovation, was first past the post. Unfortunately, in the final yards of the sprint, it threw its jockey, Keith Sims, and was disqualified. “I thought the race was won, I couldn’t believe it when Sims came off, but there was nothing I could do. Remembering Great Uncle Cyril, it sent a shiver down my spine.” So last Friday Great Nephew Alex took decisive action. He asked Father Frank Shanahan, a Roman Catholic priest attached to the parish of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Leicester, to exorcize the ghost of Great Uncle Cyril. Afterwards, Mr Whiting said, “I hope that our troubles are now at an end. The priest carried out a blessing by the finishing post and we are all hoping that it has changed our luck.”

  Upward Spirits

  Source and date: The Observer, 10 January 1988

  “Channeling” is the new fad among America’s Yuppies. At dinner parties from Malibu to New York the talk is about stocks, real estate and then entities. “Channelers” have new consciousness and new Porches: they are upwardly mobile with spirit guides. And they are not sad spiritualists harassing the beloved dead in suburban front rooms; they are executive class. “Channeling” is contact, usually by trance, with entities in some other cloudy plane – who may be your previous lives, the previous lives of others, or benevolent advisers, a kind of supernatural newsletter. They represent, according to taste, a hidden world, the unused part of the collective mind, or the bits of your own brain you don’t quite know. There are hundreds of thousands of these people across America – Shirley MacLaine is among the best known – including Yuppie fundamentalists who have found their own form of spiritualism.

  Haunted Wings in the Night

  Source and date: Sunday Express, 17 July 1988

  An astonishing tape-recording of ghostly goings-on aboard a Lincoln bomber that hasn’t f
lown for thirty years is baffling experts. Former pilots who have listened to the tape – made by a radio broadcaster under strict scientific conditions – say it reveals the precise sounds of a Lincoln in flight. Among the noises picked up on the recording are: muffled voices of aircrew; engines droning and changing pitch; morse code blips; clanging hangar doors; switches and levers being operated. Yet bomber RF 398 housed in the museum hangar at RAF Cosford, Shropshire, never saw any active service in the war. Local radio presenter Ivan Spenceley, from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, set up the tape to investigate claims that the aircraft was haunted. He left his machine running in the empty cockpit and staff locked both the bomber and the hangar behind him. He said, “When I played back the recording I shuddered. It was as if the old girl had suddenly taken to the skies. Human voices are clearly audible, but it is impossible to make out what they’re saying. It’s eerie.” Spooky tales have surrounded the bomber ever since it arrived in the hangar to be restored eleven years ago. Some engineers have been too frightened to work on it. Several people have even reported seeing a ghostly airman dressed in battle jacket inside the hangar. The museum’s administrator, John Francis, said: “The noises are a mystery. I’ve got an open mind about it all, but the ghostly stories come from level-headed people who stick by what they have seen and heard.”

  Liz’s Haunted House

  Source and date: The People, 14 August 1988

  Liz Taylor is desperately trying to sell her favourite house in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico because she believes it is haunted by the ghost of Richard Burton. But the creepy goings-on at the palatial mansion with its seven bedrooms and bathrooms, swimming pool and Pacific view have scared off all would-be buyers for almost a year despite dropping the original asking price from almost £1 million to a “silly” £625,000. Liz and Burton bought the mansion as a romantic holiday home after their second marriage thirteen years ago – but now she flatly refuses to go near the place. Maids who worked at the house with Miss Taylor claim that she had at least four chilling encounters in the four years since Burton died. On one occasion she woke in the night to find him lying in bed beside her. She is also said to have seen him sitting in his favourite rocking chair. Another “sighting” allegedly caused her to flee the house weeping, dressed only in a black lace nightie. It is known that she has consulted a spirit medium and there are even claims she has had the house exorcized. She is said to have told a friend, “The joint’s haunted. I loved Richard dearly, but I went through enough with him while he was alive without being put through the mixer again now.”

  The Haunted House of Commons

  Source and date: The People, 29 January 1989

  Down-to-earth Angus Morrison has nicknamed the Commons the Haunted House after grappling with a ghost. Lift operator Angus – all eleven stone of him – was picked up and thrown fifteen feet across a corridor. But there was nobody there. He explained, “I was sitting in the Committee Corridor at 3 a.m. when I began to feel very cold. I was just picked up bodily and thrown about fifteen feet, but I never saw anyone. It really does give me the creeps up there.” Now Westminster is buzzing with tales of the unexpected instead of worldly business. Staff have seen a shadowy bearded figure dressed in doublet and hose walking the corridors of power. Labour MP John McWilliam said, “Some people say it’s James I. I have been warned about this apparition and the atmosphere can be very eerie.” Angus Morrison reckons the Prime Minister should make a new appointment . . . official Ghostbuster.

  Putting a Spook in the Wheel

  Source and date: Daily Star, 31 July 1989

  Nervous navvies working in a remote area near Bergen in Norway have put up a road sign to warn motorists of a haunting hazard – “Ghosts Crossing”. The red and white triangular sign illustrated with a spook warns drivers of a supernatural danger on a road near a deserted cabin. The decision to erect the sign was made after workers saw mysterious figures and heard weird signs while repairing the highway. A spokesman of Bergen Highway Authority said, “People have experienced so many strange things they swear there are ghosts.”

  Harriet Gets High Grades as Ghost

  Source and date: Los Angeles Times, 1 November 1989

  The public school in Gorman, California is one of the smallest in the district. But it’s become famous in the state by reports of a little girl ghost called Harriet. According to reports by a number of students, she has been seen walking in the corridors of the building on a number of occasions. One pupil had such a close encounter with the ghost that she recognized her. There was no doubt she was the spirit of a popular and high-achieving little girl named Harriet who had been killed accidentally while crossing the street on her way to the school just over a year previously. The school authorities have so far dismissed claims that the stories are pure fantasy invented by the students.

  1990–2000

  Ghosts in Space?

  Source and date: New York Daily News, 12 March 1990

  Strange sounds and weird lights are said to have been experienced when American scientists secretly sent a human skull known as “The Phantom” on two flights into space to study the effects of radiation. And now they are planning to put a human torso into orbit. The experts from NASA insist there is nothing ghoulish about the experiments which are aimed at learning how much radiation from the sun and stars penetrates the human body and will be vital once the US embarks on ambitious space programmes to build manned stations and send spaceships to Mars. But they were puzzled by stories from crew members of “mysterious experiences” during the first flight last August. The bare cranium of “The Phantom” was packed with 125 radiation detectors and covered with plastic “skin” for the mission. Scientist Dr Richard Bowman said the skull came from an anonymous donor who willed his body to science. He added, “I have no idea whether it even came from an American – I understand skeletons for experimentation often come from other countries.”

  Going Gazump

  Source and date: The Times, 5 December 1990

  Does the presence of things that go bump in the night enhance or diminish the value of property? And what is the legal position for someone who discovers he has bought a house with a spectral sitting tenant? It depends on the ghost according to an article in Country Homes and Gardens. If the spirit is not “of the tiresomely mournful sort that wails, clanks chains or frightens the dogs”, it should be good news. Such spooks “can add value and charm to a house which might otherwise just be another victim of the property doldrums”. Two alleged haunted houses currently on the market are Rock House in Devon where Rudyard Kipling once lived and Iron Hall in the Lake District. Both make a virtue of their supernatural nature in the estate agents’ blurb. Those who do not know they are buying haunted houses and are subsequently upset by creaking stairs and doors apparently have little legal redress. Tony Girling of the Law Society’s property committee says, “There is no obligation on a seller to reveal a ghostly presence.” Richard Aldington, who is handling the sale of the Kipling house, has his own explanation of its reported otherworldly phenomena. He says, “I think a lot depends on how much one has to drink” – words, surely, that can only come back to haunt him.

  Judge Declares House is Haunted

  Source and date: Associated Press, 20 July 1991

  An American appeal court has ruled that a riverfront Victorian house is haunted and a prospective buyer can sue to get his deposit back. The wooden, turreted house overlooks the broad expanse of the Hudson River, 20 miles upstream from New York, has long been known to house benign ghosts of Revolutionary vintage and is close to the Tappan Zee bridge where the headless horseman once terrified the good people of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle lay down to sleep for twenty years. As a matter of law, the house is haunted, the New York state supreme court’s appellate division ruled in a majority decision that reversed a lower court decision. The ruling by Justice Israel Rubin means that Jeffrey and Patrice Stambovsky may return to court to try to get back the $32,500 (£20,000) they paid as deposit fo
r the house at Nyack. Mr Stambovsky, 38, a bond trader, said the vendor, Helen Ackley, failed to reveal the Revolutionary war-era ghosts that allegedly inhabit the house when he signed the contract in August 1989. Mrs Ackley, 64, former owner of the house, said her family had been seeing ghosts in the house since they moved in twenty-four years ago. She said, “I feel they are very good friends – it’s very comforting to have them around when you are by yourself.” One of the spirits is “a cheerful apple-cheeked man” and all of them were “friendly and nice”. A judge had ruled last year that caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) guides property purchases. But the appeal court declared caveat emptor less than all-encompassing and no amount of prudent inspection by the Stambovskys would have revealed the ghosts that are believed to occupy the eighteen-room house. The Stambovskys, who lived in Manhattan’s Upper East Side at the time, could not have been expected to know about the house’s reputation, Justice Rubin said, writing for the majority. He also said Mrs Ackley could not have delivered a vacant house, since ghosts live there. The Stambovskys now live about a mile from the haunted house.