13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  Kelly and Amy nodded in unison. “We need to ask you about our house,” Kelly said. She told them the address and the man reflexively lifted the axe once again, as if something truly frightening had appeared behind the girls.

  “You’d better come inside,” the woman said, beckoning them to come in without saying another word while they were out of doors.

  Amy and her sister gladly followed them into the house. They were invited to sit on the couch in the living room. They were taken aback at once at how unlike the interior of this house was to their house. It was fully decorated with modern furnishings and artwork; the lighting had been revamped with L.E.D. lightbulbs. It was much more like the place the girls had hoped for when their mum had told them about the new house in Tewkesbury.

  “You have a lovely home,” Amy told them, hoping that an honest compliment would make them more willing to share all that they knew.

  The woman smiled slightly and sat down on a chair opposite them. Her husband sat in a chair beside her. “That house that you and your mum are living in was recently purchased, wasn’t it?” she asked them. When they nodded, she continued. “It’s been on the market for years and years. Any time someone buys it, they don’t stay there long before leaving.”

  “Why is that?” Kelly asked. “We know that it’s haunted with spirits or something, but what exactly is going on?”

  The husband sighed. “There’s a legend around these parts that that house is haunted by the restless spirits of the Longman family. It is said that Mr. Longman was murdered and his death had a dramatic effect on his wife. She went mad one night and killed her brother, who was severely mentally handicapped from an earlier accident, as well as her two small children. Then she hanged herself. Legend has it that she and her family remained in that house, wreaking havoc on all those who try to stay there…”

  “So, that is to say, if we were you, we would get out of there as soon as possible,” the woman said. “And we can help you with that. You must stay here with where you will be safe. I’m Mrs. Barton, and this is my husband, Mr. Barton.”

  “But our mother is in there,” Amy said, her voice trembling as much as her hands were now. “We can’t just leave her there!”

  “From the sound of it, your mother has been taken by these spirits,” Mr. Barton said. “It would be best for you to stay here until the morning at least. The parish in town has a priest who specializes in exorcism.”

  “Oh my god,” Kelly gasped, horror-stricken. “Poor Mum!”

  “It’s possible that it won’t be necessary,” Mrs. Barton tried to soothe them. “But it would be best to at least rule that out with the help of the priest. Now let me go find you some blankets. You can sleep in our spare bedroom.”

  Like they were going to be able to get any sleep.

  Despite being scared and worn out from all that had happened, Kelly and Amy slept well in the Barton’s’ guest room. They were roused from sleep the following morning by the smell of French toast emanating from the kitchen.

  Fortified by this delicious breakfast, the girls thanked Mrs. and Mr. Barton for their hospitality and for the information. Then they left the house and got back into their car. The parish church was not that far away, in the centre of Tewkesbury. Amy and Kelly were nervous about what they were going to have to tell the priest once they were there, but they had been told that he was used to performing exorcisms so this sort of thing had to be not too far out of the norm for them.

  “Gosh, can you imagine?” Amy asked Kelly as they walked up to the church’s doors. “Being so used to these angry spirits that it’s just a part of your job now?”

  “I just hope it’s not a crock of shit,” Kelly said sceptically. “I don’t think we have any other options, so we have to put all of our faith in this stranger…”

  The parish priest was a smiley young man with black, slicked back hair and dimples. He wore small, gold-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose. He looked like such a stereotype of a priest from movies. Amy was beginning to wonder if this whole town was a bit odd. The Barton’s had seemed so nice, but then they likely had not lived here too long either.

  Right away, they explained their strange predicament to the priest, who listened solemnly and took everything they had to say with the utmost seriousness. “It sounds to me like you have quite a few spirits in your house,” he said when they were done with their story. “I have heard of this house – this Grave’s End. I do not doubt for an instant that it got that name for a reason… It seems that the Longman family, their father not included, has chosen this home as the basis for their unfinished business. This spirit of Mrs. Longman has long prayed on the minds of young women who were vulnerable, insecure and perhaps in some other way similar to her.”

  The priest stood up and went to his bookshelf, producing a book about the spirits of Tewkesbury. Kelly felt extremely uncomfortable. “Mum has been pretty vulnerable for a while now. You see, she is coming out of a nasty divorce. That was the reason she was so captivated by the idea of moving here.”

  “I do believe,” the priest said. “that your mother did not choose that house solely of her own volition. Mrs. Longman wanted her to move in there.” He handed them the book and Amy and Kelly leafed through the pages, reading all about poor Leah Longman and the murders of her children and brother.

  “The children died in the bathtub!” Amy pointed out the paragraph so Kelly could read it. “No wonder we heard splashing and laughter in there!”

  “And then the scream…” Kelly’s face went white as a sheet.

  The priest nodded solemnly. “I believe that it is now time for us to go back there. I shall perform an exorcism for you. Only then will your mother be free of this restless spirit.”

  The sisters drove the Mini back to Grave’s End House. The priest drove in his own car, believing that when it was all done, they would be leaving the house. That was the sane thing to do, but who knew what their mother would want?

  The priest went into the house first, carrying his Bible and rosaries. He went up the stairs and straight to their mother’s room as if he somehow knew exactly where Jen would be. He opened the door without knocking.

  “I thought I told you bitches to KNOCK!!” Jen bellowed. The curtains of her bed were blowing as if in a strong breeze.

  Amy and Kelly followed the priest in. Cautiously they looked up, but the apparition of the hanging woman was no longer there. That was perhaps not a good sign… It seemed like that restless spirit had found a home in their mum.

  “Hello Jen,” the priest said calmly. “…Hello Leah.”

  Jen snarled at him in a low voice.

  The priest went to the bed, holding out the cross from one of his rosaries. “The power of Christ compels you to leave the body of Jen Campbell. You do not belong there. You must leave Jen, Leah. The power of Christ compels you to leave!”

  Jen continued to growl and spit, tossing her head left and right but never leaving the bed. The eerie red light returned, coming now from beneath the bed instead of beneath the door.

  The priest began reciting Bible verses in Latin – incantations that Kelly and Amy could not understand, but which seemed to be working. The bed began to shake and then it rose a few feet off the ground. Amy let out a scream, but the priest was unperturbed by this, like he had seen it before. Kelly was amazed that a man of his age could already be so used to such things.

  At last, he started yelling in Latin and added, “THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU TO LEAVE, LEAH!!” He produced a small vial of Holy water and tossed it onto Jen, into her face. The red glow left the bottom of the bed and the bed lowered to the ground. Then the red flew up through Jen and back up to the ceiling, going through it and seemingly out of the house altogether.

  For now, anyway.

  “Oh,” Jen said faintly, sounding more like herself. “I’ve got an awful headache.”

  “Mum!” the girls cried, rushing to her bedside and hugged her. They were going to have a great deal to tell
her, way too much for the immediate time being. For now they had to get out of there.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Epilogue

  Jen and the girls packed their belongings and were gone from the house the very next day. Once Jen had been told about the horrors that had occurred in Grave’s End House – including the changes that had come over her – she insisted that they leave. They would find a new home for themselves back in London, where the old haunts were more like family than actual ghosts.

  The old Tudor house in Tewkesbury was put back on the market and it has been there ever since.

  The Haunting of Ravenscroft Castle

  Clarice Black

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Prologue

  The Duke of Grafton was a man of many traits; good taste was one of them. He knew how to dress dapperly, how to play Polo with finesse, how to charm the ladies (although after marriage he did put a stop to this, more out of propriety than his own will), and how to build a castle. His castle, which was the only castle in Grafton, Oxfordshire, was a magnificent wonder to behold, with numerous towers pointing aggressively to the sky, as if saying “come charge at us, you scurvy knave, our tips will pierce you asunder!”, with its stone walls and large halls, and lit corridors and lush grounds and gardens. It was the epitome of his life and career as a Duke, and upon its near-completion, he revered in its beauty, inviting all members of the court and government with whom he enjoyed good terms, to a magnificent banquet and ball. There, in the midst of cheerful reverie and jubilation, he met the austere Lady Jane Notley, a woman of extreme beauty and unlimited wealth. She carried a long line of good familial name and heritage and, when she spoke, her words dripped with culture, and her gait was nothing short of poetic. He fell for her, the Duke did, and could not help himself after one dance with the Lady, and dropped down to one knee.

  “Marry me, my dear. I know you not nearly as well as I’d like to, but I know this that my heart belongs to you from now,” said he with a tone of innocent honesty, and kept stopped on his knee in the middle of the ballroom, with hushed audience surrounding him, and a bewildered Lady standing in front of him, until the silence was broken when she said yes. The crowd, unsure during the silence, burst forth into applause and danced harder, drank deeper and became frenzied with a collective happiness resulting from Lady Notley’s acceptance of the proposal. They danced throughout the remainder of the night, the Duke and Lady, and when the clock struck midnight and the guests had left with their remarks on the castle’s fabulousness, they still danced in the moonlight from the giant window in the wall. He was mesmerized by her as he was by no other woman. They made love in his master bedroom that night, and were married the following Sunday. She bore him a child right away, and although the clerics at the church claimed that since he had been conceived before the marriage, he was a bastard, the Duke and Lady disregarded these religious gossips and loved him nonetheless.

  The castle was not built completely. For the next eight years, one business succeeded the next in such a manner that the Duke was left with no time to tend to the architects, the masons, the engineers, and so, the castle with its half-built demeanour, remained such for a decade. But it was still beautiful, with its gothic revival structure serenading the green countryside around it, and complimenting the stream that flowed around it. The stream ran to a lake in front of the castle, and around the lake was a sprawl of botanical gardens, with flowers and fruit-bearing trees. The Duke, whenever he’d get a reprieve from business, would sit in those lawns with his wife and child, and drink tea as he’d tell them tales from his office life. They were not boring tales, all of them, but they did not very well captivate the attention of Lady Notley. She was a woman of the arts; a cultural exquisiteness who adored literature, fine music, paintings and ballads. There was love between the couple, but much of it was reserved to the primitive carnal desire the Duke had for the Lady. Sadly, no matter how she tried, he did not acquire a taste or appreciation for the finer things in life. He knew his way around wines, but he’d never understand Chaucer. He’d appreciate a rowdy band of musicians in a ballroom, but if you made him listen to Beethoven, he’d fall asleep out of boredom. But the Lady persevered, and poured her love for the arts into her son. He, at least, reciprocated.

  It was the fifth annual Amesbury Art Festival, where numerous writers had gathered to sign off their books, and a multitude of poets had teamed up with musicians to sing their new ballads, and Lady Notley, an admirer of such things as I’ve already mentioned many times, begged her husband to go. He could not accompany her, for there was business to be dealt with, and he was finally getting his head around recommencing the building of this fine castle, so he asked his wife to leave someone to cater to their son’s needs.

  She thought for a moment before assigning the task to her cousin, Martha Leonard, who was an educationist in Oxfordshire. She was also Martin’s (Duke and Lady’s son) personal tutor, and hence was on friendly terms with him. She also knew the Duke well, since she frequented the castle five days of the week to teach young Martin. There was no better candidate. Lady Notley left for Amesbury and bid her husband and son goodbye.

  Little did she know that her husband, a promiscuous man by nature, though kept in check after their marriage, would fall for Martha and she for him, because the two were like peas in a pod. He would tell her crude jokes about jesters farting, after getting drunk, and she’d laugh, while leaving Martin unattended and to his own devices.

  Lady Notley was to return on the first of May, but since the Amesbury festival wrapped up a day early, she made for her home before she’d intended. Hoping to surprise her husband, she sneaked quietly to the bedroom, but was distressed out of her wits when she saw the Duke and her cousin in bed, in the throes of love making. She screamed and flung her travel bag at the two of them and stormed off. Then she checked on her son. After seeing he was fine, she continued in her delirious state to the kitchen, where she got a butcher’s knife. She headed for the bedroom, where the two cheaters were hurriedly dressing and thinking of an excuse to get out of this messy situation. But the situation would only get messier.

  In her rage, Jane Notley plunged the knife repeatedly into her cousin, till the woman was dead and brutalized all over. She flung the knife at her husband, and he swerved to avoid it. When he turned his face, she was gone. He followed her to the third floor of the castle, to her son’s room, barged the door open and saw his wife and his son standing at the window sill.

  “Jane!” was all he managed to say before his wife pulled herself and her son off the window, and fell to her grisly suicidal death in the garden below, splattering the green grass with her entrails and the blood of her son.

  The Duke became demented witnessing the death of the three, two he loved dearly, and one with whom he was sexing moments before her death. Using the knife still warm with the blood of the murdered cousin, he slit his wrists in an attempt to atone for his sins.

  *

  It followed that the association of this grim incident with the castle, caused no nobleman or Lord to want to buy it. It fell into a state of dereliction; half unbuilt, haunted by the deaths of the duke, his wife, his lover and his child. No one wanted this place that was touched by such ghastliness, and they preferred to take the longer route to avoid it. Two centuries passed and the castle grew old and evermore haunted. Those unlucky fellows who happened upon it unsuspectedly reported seeing ghostly beings roaming about in the walls, the sounds of shrieking and crying echoing in the corridors, and the smell of death and the malicious feeling of revenge heavy in the air.

  After two centuries, a gentleman named Mr. William Warwick came across the castle, and saw it not as a haunted location, but as sound real estate available at a cheap price. And so he took the opportunity. He bought the castle at the price you’d pay for an apartment in London at that time, and began renovating and rebuilding it to accommodate his own family. He was a wealthy businessman from London and, having spent most of hi
s years in grinding toil to make money, he wanted to retire to a relaxed country life. And this castle seemed just the place for that. Unlike most people who were steeped in superstition, he was a logical man who believed that ghosts existed merely in the pages of fairy-tales. This lack of belief in evil would be the cause of his downfall, little did he know. He had a wife, a trophy piece who seldom did anything or said anything besides look pretty for her husband, and a boy of nine. Theirs was a simple family, despite all their controversies and short comings, and their moving to this castle from the hum drum and fast pace of London life was going to serve as a fresh start.

  When they began their stay there, they did so in a renovated castle. Much of which was rebuilt and reconstructed adequately, giving this castle for the first time in its life, a look of completion. Contrary to the previous owner’s life style, William Warwick preferred solitude, as did his wife and child.

  The resident negative energy affected his wife. Gradually, over the course of a year, she went insane, babbling on about a woman who whispered to her in her sleep, who made her do cruel things, who spoke to her of unspeakable horrors. Eventually the wife lost her mind and, in front of her husband she grasped her boy and jumped out the window to her death. He was devastated, torn by what he had witnessed, and immediately sold this castle back to the previous owners. They say, although it is obscure in the records of history, that William himself committed suicide in those very corridors after being unable to come to terms with the horrific death of his wife and child.

  The castle, ever the more pristine and beautiful, remained haunted throughout the nineteenth century and attracted many tourists from afar. They were the idiots who dared to go in despite the warnings, some of whom left insane and with a drive to kill themselves. All of those who’d gone berserk were women. If one were to research, one would find that those women all had an emotional tendency to feel things more sensitively than others.