by Hans Holzer
WHEN KING HENRY VIII broke with Rome as the aftermath of not getting a divorce, but also for a number of more weighty reasons, English monastic life came to an abrupt halt. Abbeys and monasteries were “secularized,” that is, turned into worldly houses, and the monks thrown out. Now and again an abbot with a bad reputation for greed was publicly executed. The first half of the sixteenth century was full of tragedies and many an innocent monk, caught up in the new turmoil of religious matters, was swept to his doom.
The conflict of the abolished monk or nun and the new owners of their former abode runs through all of England, and there are a number of ghosts that have their origin in this situation.
The “act of dissolution” which created a whole new set of homeless Catholic clerics also created an entirely new type of haunting. Our intent was to follow up on a few of the more notorious ghosts resulting from the religious schism.
I should be happy to report that it was a typically glorious English fall day when we set out for Southampton very early in the morning. It was not. It rained cats and dogs, also typically English. I was to make an appearance on Southern TV at noon, and we wanted a chance to visit the famed old Cathedral at Winchester, halfway down to Southampton. My reason for this visit was the many persistent reports of people having witnessed ghostly processions of monks in the church, where no monks have trod since the sixteenth century. If one stood at a certain spot in the nave of the huge cathedral, one might see the transparent monks pass by. They would never take notice of you; they weren’t that kind of ghost. Rather, they seemed like etheric impressions of a bygone age, and those who saw them re-enact their ceremonial processions, especially burial services for their own, were psychic people able to pierce the veil. In addition, a rather remarkable report had come to me of some photographs taken at Winchester. The Newark Evening News of September 9, 1958, relates the incident:
Amateur photographer T. L. Taylor thought he was photographing empty choir stalls inside Winchester Cathedral, but the pictures came out with people sitting in the stalls.
Taylor took two pictures inside the cathedral nearly a year ago. The first shows the choir stalls empty. The second, taken an instant later, shows 13 figures in the stalls, most of them dressed in medieval costume. Taylor swears he saw no one there.
Taylor’s wife, their 16-year-old daughter Valerie, and a girl friend of Valerie’s said they were with him when he took the pictures. They saw nothing in the stalls. “It gives me the creeps,” Valerie said.
Taylor, a 42-year-old electrical engineer whose hobby is photography, is convinced that the films were not double exposed. He said his camera has a device to prevent double exposures and the company which made the film confirmed the ghosts were not caused through faulty film.
As I already reported in Ghost Hunter, I take psychic photography very seriously. Not only John Myers, but others have demonstrated its authenticity under strictest test conditions, excluding all kinds of possible forgery or deception. The camera, after all, has no human foibles and emotions. What it sees, it sees. If ghostly impressions on the ether are emotionally triggered electric impulses in nature, it seems conceivable that a sensitive film inside the camera may record it.
My own camera is a Zeiss-Ikon Super Ikonta B model, a fifteen-year-old camera which has a device making double exposures impossible. I use Agfa Record film, size 120, and no artificial light whatever except what I find in the places I photograph. I don’t use flash or floodlights, and have my films developed by commercial houses. I wouldn’t know how to develop them myself, if I had to.
When we arrived at Winchester, it was really pouring. My wife and I quickly jumped from the car and raced into the church. It was 11 o’clock in the morning and the church was practically empty, except for two or three visitors in the far end of the nave. Light came in through the high windows around the altar, but there was no artificial light whatever, no electricity, only the dim light from the windows and the faraway entrance gate. The high wooden chairs of the choir face each other on both sides of the nave, and there are three rows on each side. Prayer books rest on the desks in front of each seat. The entire area is surrounded by finely carved Gothic woodwork, with open arches, through which one can see the remainder of the nave. There wasn’t a living soul in those chairs.
The solitude of the place, the rain outside, and the atmosphere of a distant past combined to make us feel really remote and far from worldly matters. Neither of us was the least bit scared, for Ghost Hunters don’t scare.
I set up my camera on one of the chair railings, pointed it in the direction of the opposite row of choir chairs, and exposed for about two seconds, all the while keeping the camera steady on its wooden support. I repeated this process half a dozen times from various angles. We then left the cathedral and returned to the waiting car. The entire experiment took not more than fifteen minutes.
When the films came back from the laboratory the following day, I checked them over carefully. Four of the six taken showed nothing unusual, but two did. One of them quite clearly showed a transparent group or rather procession of hooded monks, seen from the rear, evidently walking somewhat below the present level of the church floor. I checked and found out that the floor used to be below its present level, so the ghostly monks would be walking on the floor level they knew, not ours.
I don’t claim to be a medium, nor is my camera supernatural. Nevertheless, the ghostly monks of Winchester allowed themselves to be photographed by me!
* * *
We left Southampton after my television show, and motored towards Salisbury. South of that old city, at Downton, Benson Herbert maintains his “paraphysical laboratory” where he tests psychic abilities of various subjects with the help of ingenious apparatus. One of his “operators,” a comely young lady by the name of Anne Slow-grove, also dabbles in witchcraft and is a sort of younger-set witch in the area. Her abilities include precognition and apparently she is able to influence the flickering of a light or the sound of a clock by will power, slowing them down or speeding them up at will. A devoted man, Benson Herbert was introduced to me by Sybil Leek, medium and “White Witch” of the New Forest. We witnessed one of his experiments, after which we followed his car out of the almost inaccessible countryside towards our next objective, Moyles Court, Ringwood.
The ghostly goings-on at Moyles Court had come to my attention both through Sybil Leek, and through an article in the September issue of Fate magazine.
The original house goes back to the eleventh century and there is a wing certainly dating back to the Tudor period; the main house is mostly sixteenth century, and is a fine example of a large country manor of the kind not infrequently seen in the New Forest in the south of England.
Lilian Chapman, the author of the Fate article, visited the place in 1962, before it was sold to the school which now occupies it. The Chapmans found the house in a sad state of disrepair and were wondering if it could be restored, and at what cost.
Mrs. Chapman, wandering about the place, eventually found herself seated on the window sill near the landing leading to the second floor, while the rest of the party continued upstairs. As she sat there alone, relaxing, she felt herself overcome with a sense of fear and sadness:
As I looked toward the doors which led to the Minstrels Gallery, I was amazed to see, coming through them, a shadowy figure in a drab yellow cloak. There seemed more cloak than figure. The small cape piece nearly covered a pair of hands which were clasped in anguish or prayer. The hands clasped and unclasped as the apparition came towards me. I felt no fear, only an intense sorrow. And I swear I heard a gentle sigh as the figure passed me and drifted to the end of the landing. From there it returned to go down the stairs, seeming to disappear through a window facing the chapel.
I, too, have sat on that spot, quietly, relaxed. And I have felt a chill and known a heaviness of heart for which there was no logical reason.
The Chapmans did not buy the house, but the Manor House School did at the sub
sequent auction sale. Unknown to Mrs. Chapman at the time, Dame Lisle, onetime owner of the manor house, was tried and executed at nearby Winchester by the notorious “hanging judge” Jeffreys in 1685. The sole crime committed by the aged lady was that she had given shelter overnight to two fugitives from the battle of Sedgemoor. The real reason, of course, was her Puritan faith. As described by Mrs. Chapman in detail, it was indeed the apparition of the unfortunate lady she had witnessed.
I contacted the headmistress of the school, Miss V. D. Hunter, for permission to visit, which she granted with the understanding that no “publicity” should come to the school in England. I agreed not to tell any English news of our visit.
Where the monks of Beaulieu are still being heard
When we arrived at Moyles Court, it was already five o’clock, but Miss Hunter had left on an urgent errand. Instead, a Mrs. Finch, one of the teachers, received us.
“What is the background of the haunting here?” I inquired.
“Dame Lisle hid her two friends in the cellar here,” she said, “where there was an escape tunnel to the road. There were spies out watching for these people, they discovered where they were, and she was caught and tried before Judge Jeffreys. She was beheaded, and ever since then her ghost was said to be wandering about in this house.”
“Has anyone ever seen the ghost?”
“We have met several people who had lived here years ago, and had reared their families here, and we know of one person who definitely has seen the ghost at the gates of the house—and I have no reason to disbelieve her. This was about twenty-five years ago, but more recently there has been somebody who came into the house just before we took it over when it was covered in cobwebs and in a very bad state. She sat in the passage here and said that she had seen the ghost walking along it.”
“How was the ghost described?”
“She has always been described as wearing a saffron robe.”
“Does the ghost ever disturb anyone at the house?”
“No, none. On the contrary, we have always heard that she was a sweet person and that there is nothing whatever to be afraid of. We’ve had television people here, but we don’t want the children to feel apprehensive and as a matter of fact, the older children rather look forward to meeting the ghostly lady.”
I thanked Mrs. Finch, and we were on our way once more, as the sun started to settle. We were hoping to make it to Beaulieu before it was entirely dark. As we drove through the nearly empty New Forest—empty of people, but full of wild horses and other animals—we could readily understand why the present-day witches of England choose this natural preserve as their focal point. It is an eerie, beautifully quiet area far removed from the gasoline-soiled world of the big cities.
We rolled into Beaulieu around 6 o’clock, and our hosts, the Gore-Brownes, were already a bit worried about us.
My contact with Beaulieu began a long time before we actually arrived there. Elizabeth Byrd, author of Immortal Queen and Flowers of the Forest, introduced us to the Gore-Brownes, who had been her hosts when she spent some time in England. Miss Byrd is keenly aware of the psychic elements around us, and when she heard we were going to visit Beaulieu—it consists of the manor house itself owned by Lord Montague and known as the Palace House; “The Vineyards,” a smaller house owned by the Gore-Brownes and, of course, the ruins of the once magnificent Abbey and gardens—she implored me to have a look from a certain room at “The Vineyards.”
“When you go to Beaulieu please ask Margaret to take you up to ‘The Red Room’—my room—and leave you alone there a while. It is not the room but the view from the window that is strange. If even I feel it, so should you have a very strong impression of static time. I have looked from that window at various seasons of the year at various times of day and always have sensed a total hush...as though life had somehow stopped. The trees are as fixed as a stage-set, the bushes painted. Nothing seems quite real. As you know, I am a late riser, but I was always up at dawn at Beaulieu when that view was nearly incredible to me—not just fog, something more, which I can only call permanent and timeless and marvelously peaceful. I would not have been surprised (or afraid) to see monks tending the vineyards. It would have seemed perfectly natural. If one could ever enter a slit in time it would be at Beaulieu.”
The ruins of the monastery walls
The vivid description of the view given us by Elizabeth Byrd was only too accurate. Although it was already dusk when we arrived, I could still make out the scenery and the ruins of the Abbey silhouetted against the landscape. My wife was rather tired from the long journey, so I left her to warm herself at the comfortable fireplace, while Colonel Gore-Browne took me down to the Abbey, to meet a friend, Captain B., who had been a longtime resident of Beaulieu. The Palace House, comparatively new, was not the major center of hauntings.
A modern Motor Museum had been built next to it by Lord Montague, and has become a major tourist attraction. I have no objections to that, but I do find it a bit peculiar to have a washroom built into an ancient chapel, with a large sign on the roof indicating its usage!
The Abbey itself had not been commercialized, but lay tranquil on the spot of land between “The Vineyards” and an inlet of water leading down to the channel called “the Splent,” which separates the Hampshire coast from the Isle of Wight. Here we stood, while the Captain looked for his keys so we could enter the Abbey grounds.
“What exactly happened here in the way of a haunting, Captain?” I asked, as we entered the churchyard surrounding the ruined Abbey walls.
“A young lady who lived in Beaulieu was walking across this little path toward what we call ‘the parson’s wicked gate,’ when she saw a brown-robed figure which she thought was a visitor. She had been walking along with her eyes on the ground and she raised them when she got near to where she thought the man would be so as not to run into him—but he just wasn’t there!”
We were now standing in the ruined “garth” or garden of the Abbey. Around us were the arched walls with their niches; back of us was the main wall of what is now the Beaulieu church, but which was once the monks’ dining hall or refectory.
“Has anyone seen anything here?” I inquired.
“Well, there were two ladies who lived in the little flat in the domus conversorum. One of them, a retired trained nurse of very high standing, told me that one Sunday morning she came out onto the little platform outside her flat and she looked, and in the fifth recess there she saw a monk sitting reading a scroll.”
“What did she do?”
“She watched him for a minute or two, then unfortunately she heard her kettle boiling over and she had to go in. When she came out again, of course, he was gone.”
“Did it ever occur to her that he was anything but flesh and blood?”
“Oh, yes, she knew that he couldn’t have been flesh and blood.”
“Because there are no monks at Beaulieu.”
“Yes.”
“Was she frightened?”
“Not in the least.”
“Are there any other instances of ghosts in this area?”
The Captain cleared his throat. “Well, old Mr. Poles, who was Vicar here from 1886 to 1939, used to talk of meeting and seeing the monks in the church, which was the lay brothers’ refectory and which is now behind us. He also used to hear them as a daily occurrence.”
We walked back to the church and entered its dark recesses. The interior is of modern design hardly consistent with its ancient precursor, but it is in good taste and the mystic feeling of presences persists.
This was the place where the Vicar had met the ghostly monks.
“He not only heard them singing,” the Captain said, “but he also saw them. They were present.”
“Has anyone else seen the ghostly apparitions in this church?”
“A few years ago,” the Captain replied in his calm, deliberate voice, as if he were explaining the workings of a new gun to a recruit, “I was waiting for the funeral
procession of a man who used to work here, and two ladies came into the church. We got to talking a little, and one of them said, ‘When I came to this church about thirty years ago, with my friend, she saw it as it was.’
“I didn’t quite understand what she meant and I said, ‘Oh, I know, the church was completely altered in 1840.’
“‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘I mean—we both saw it—as it was, when the monks had it.’
“I questioned her about this.
“‘We came in,’ she said, ‘and we saw the church laid out apparently as a dining room. We were rather surprised, but we really did not think anything very much of it, and then we went out. But when we got home, we talked it over, and we came to the conclusion that there was something rather extraordinary, because we hadn’t seen it as a parish church at all. Then we made inquiries and, of course, we realized that we had seen into the past.”’
The ladies had evidently been catapulted back in time to watch the monks of Beaulieu at supper, four hundred years ago!
I walked out into the middle of the nave and in a hushed voice invited the monks to show themselves. There was only utter silence in the darkened church, for it was now past the hour when even a speck of light remains in the sky.
As I slowly walked back up the aisle and into the present, I thought I heard an organ play softly somewhere overhead. But it may have been my imagination. Who is to tell? In that kind of atmosphere and having just talked about it, one must not discount suggestion.
Others have heard the ghostly monks in the garden, burying their own. Burial services are very important to a monk, and King Henry had deprived them of the privilege of being laid to rest in the proper manner. Where could the dead monks go? The Abbey was the only place they knew on earth, and so they clung to it, in sheer fear of what lay beyond the veil.
Quite possibly, too, the ghostly brothers cannot accept the strange fact that their sacred burial ground, their cemetery, has never been found! There is a churchyard around the Abbey, but it belonged and still belongs to the people of Beaulieu. The monks had their own plot and no one knows where it is. I have a feeling that there will be ghostly monks walking at Beaulieu until someone stumbles onto that ancient burial ground, and reconsecrates it properly.
