Will Storr vs. The Supernatural: One Man's Search for the Truth About Ghosts

by Will Storr

  It was Father Bill who first warned me about Beelzebub. I was thirteen, and had been caught bunking off Sunday school to do a Ouija board in a multi-storey car park with some friends. As part of my punishment, it was arranged that I would have a sit-down telling-off from Father Bill, the local priest who, I was told, was the parish’s appointed exorcist.

  He sat me down in one of the gloomy flats that housed the clergy and warned me to stay away from the world of the occult. Many boys dabble, he said, only to be struck down in the future by hell-borne problems. And it’s not just obvious things, he said. It’s not all possessions and hauntings and black shadows by the bed. Satan can come knocking wearing a more mundane coat. The Ouija abuser could have health or personal problems, or their luck could just turn rotten. Most often, the afflicted simply find that their faith in God mysteriously drains away. The invisible world of the undead, the world of ghosts and spirits, is the world where the devil lives, he told me calmly. And if you go looking for the devil, the devil will find you.

  I’ve never had cause to think much about the strange and menacing warning that Father Bill gave me all those years ago. But, as this journey takes me closer to the tumble-down world of the mystics and the priests, and my rationality slowly dissolves, like scientific sugar lumps in supernatural tea, I’m becoming increasingly worried about my spiritual safety. Father Bill warned me about the dark side, and, suddenly, I can feel its weird shadow falling across me. So it’s obvious what I need next – some advice from a druid.

  For that, I’ve travelled up to a chewing-gum-dappled brick suburbia, half an hour north of Newcastle, to meet Stephen. I’ve heard that he teaches beginners how to keep themselves safe from supernatural harm in vigil situations. So far, the only anti-ghost defence technique I’ve been shown is Lou’s ‘white Christ light’. And, as that relies solely on my unshakeable faith, I thought it would be a good idea to load myself up with as many other ones as possible. If I’m going to spend my evenings and weekends hanging about in places where the structure of time, logic and death is unstable, I’m probably going to need the protection of some sort of psychic hard-hat.

  ‘The mind can often see what was then as well as what is now,’ Stephen says, with his eyes set to enigmatic, when I meet him. It’s half past eleven on a Saturday morning and we’re standing in the middle of a neat, grassy family park, over the road from a Texaco petrol station and a hairdresser’s called Hot Cutz. The sky is mercurial and sagging. There’s a freezing, acid wind and ticks of rain are landing on my face. But whereas I’m trying to shrink inside my clothes to get as far away as I can from the puffin-friendly conditions, Stephen looks relaxed and entirely comfortable. As a nature-worshipping druid, his attitude towards the weather is like that of a proud parent of a toxic two-year-old. He’s utterly blind to all its sharp and ugly edges because he is so completely consumed with love for it. He doesn’t feel discomfort when Mother Nature dribbles down the back of his neck or bites him on the fingers because, he feels, she’s an extension of himself and he accepts her unconditionally. It’s quite touching. And also quite annoying.

  ‘Now,’ he says, ‘have a look at this tree and tell me what you feel. Don’t try too hard and don’t think. You should go with the first feelings that you have because your senses kick in before your thoughts.’

  It’s a mature tree, but thin and knuckly. Its branches seem dislocated at their joints and the trunk twists uncomfortably upwards as if it’s trying to escape from some agony that’s scratching and biting at it from the inside. This, I think, is not a happy tree.

  ‘Very good,’ he says. ‘Trees are usually very comforting things to be around, but this one isn’t. This one has seen a lot. You might also feel a hot, tingly sensation in your toes. People often associate cold with dark forces, but when you feel heat – that’s when you should be careful.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask, looking around me at the kids on the swings and the Mondeos and Kas that are queuing up at the lights outside the park, grumbling and fuming like angry bulls. ‘Are there dark forces around here?’

  He looks at me as I shiver, my fists nesting deep in the corners of my coat pockets. Small drips of water are forming on his pale, wide face and matting the hair on his forehead.

  ‘We are now standing on what was Herrington Hall,’ he says, as a drip on his temple turns into a trickle. ‘It was pulled down because nobody wanted to be in it.’

  He points down to some ruined stone steps that appear out of the ground. They’re low, crumbled and long redundant, having been conquered years ago by grass and dog turds.

  ‘These steps used to lead from the kitchen to the gardens,’ he says. ‘Somebody was murdered on them. So, you were quite right about the tree. It saw that murder and it can remember everything. That’s what you’re picking up on now. It’s easy to dismiss those feelings and just pass them off as something ridiculous, like, “Oh, it’s just because it’s shadowy round here” – the human brain loves to rationalise. But you should ignore those thoughts and learn to trust your feelings. The human senses are very, very strong.’

  ‘So there’s nothing actually bad here now?’ I say.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘what you’re picking up on is an echo. Mind you,’ he says, looking over at a conspiratorial gang of trees that form a small wooded area at the eastern end of the park, ‘I have been worrying of late, because all the rooks have disappeared.’

  I follow the druid down a muddy track and we leave the old boundary of Herrington Hall and enter a quiet, hedge-lined road. As we walk towards an old church spire that looms up towards the grisly sky, Stephen tells me that everybody has psychic abilities and he is mystified when people act as though they’re clever for using them. I like Stephen. He has bear-like proportions, and radiates a soothing, tranquil confidence, so that even though he has holes in his anorak, plastic bags in his pockets and speaks using only one side of his mouth, you tend automatically to take what he says seriously.

  We cross the road. My big toes start to numb over. As I listen to Stephen, I think back to Michelham and the room with the mysterious opened drawer. As soon as I walked into that space that night, everything went foreboding. According to Stephen, that was my senses sounding the alarm. And if the rods are to be believed, it certainly looks as though we did find something. But was it the spirit of Sir Thomas Sackville?

  If so, it strikes me, I might have found a terrifying truth about the ultimate cruelty of death. Perhaps the afterlife isn’t the paradise that the priests believe in or the perfect sleep of the rationalists. Perhaps, when we die, we stay here, and death is slow and earthbound and endless. Perhaps souls can become stuck and lurk around their rooms for centuries. Or maybe there is such a thing as heaven and what I’d witnessed at Michelham was hell. Perhaps Lou’s ghost lights and the presence at the priory were damned souls that have been condemned to a pointless eternity, chasing their tails amongst the living. And maybe they can communicate, very weakly, using tools like Paolo’s dowsing rods or Kathy’s gold necklace. This, I think, is a worrying development.

  After a few minutes, we reach a gate in a shoulder-high wall that’s the colour of old bones. Its four crumbling arms embrace a large, fallen cemetery. It has worn gravestones, dead trees, cracked crucifixes and sad stone angels covered in pale lichen scabs.

  We pause, for a moment, in silence. I look at Stephen, who is smiling in his ragged blue anorak.

  ‘Stephen,’ I say, ‘I don’t really like graveyards.’

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t scare you,’ he says. ‘Graveyards should be neutral. By the time bodies get this far, their spirits are long departed. The only time graveyards are dangerous is when people have been summoning up.’

  He points to a far corner, to a huddle of high, looming pines. A gang of rooks swoop, flutter and caw in the grey air above them.

  ‘What do you feel when you look in there?’

  I decide to hedge my bets. ‘It’s shadowy,’ I say.

  ‘That’s right,’ Steph
en says. ‘There is shadow there, and it’s not all coming from the trees.’

  ‘It’s not?’ I say.

  ‘Trees can be corrupted,’ the druid says. He turns and walks through the flaky metal gate into the cemetery, making his way briskly towards the corrupted trees. ‘Remember what I said about summoning up?’ he calls back to me. ‘Well, this is a particularly spiritually dangerous graveyard to be in. Do say if you don’t want to carry on.’

  Standing in the centre of the copse, on a spongy matting of dead vegetation, Stephen tells me that he was walking down a nearby road one night when he saw a cloud hovering directly over these trees. Four dead-straight bolts of lightning shot out of the cloud and met just where we are standing.

  ‘I don’t know what was being summoned,’ he says, ‘but that was quite a powerful energy and I’ve never forgotten it. Lightning does not travel in straight lines unless it’s called.’

  For some reason, though, I feel fine. Perhaps my psychic antennae are exhausted. Then again, perhaps it’s nothing paranormal. Maybe the presence of Stephen has reassured me. And maybe I usually feel foreboding in graveyards simply because I associate them with death and zombies.

  ‘Right,’ Stephen says, rubbing some rain out of his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘There are some fields nearby. Do you want to have a go at some psychic protection?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I say, and we troop off out of the graveyard, down a thin country lane, and clamber over a muddy stile.

  ‘The first two we’re going to try,’ he says, as we arrive in the middle of an overgrown grass field, which is surrounded by low hills and bisected by a giant march of electricity pylons, ‘are based on ancient Middle Eastern techniques that come from the Wisdom of Solomon. The first technique is called the Armour of the Soul. Close your eyes and picture your aura as bright and wide and burning all around you. Then, slowly, mentally bring it inwards, so it’s only an inch away from you. Then turn it blue.’

  I stand there, in the middle of the drizzly field, with my eyes closed, imagining myself glowing with a dense blue crust of light. Some time passes. A plane buzzes slowly overhead. Somewhere to my left, a sheep starts laughing at me. I half open one eye.

  ‘Very good,’ Stephen says, smiling proudly and nodding. ‘Very good indeed. Next is the Shield of Tranquillity. This one has the benefit of being directional and is effective in any circumstance. If you’re out on a Saturday night and see an awful mob down an alleyway – set it up. It’s worked for me many a time.’

  Following his instructions, I raise my hand and imagine a scorching beam of white light streaming out of it. I aim it at some rabbits.

  ‘Excellent,’ says the smiling druid as the rabbits run downhill. ‘This last method is ancient Babylonian. It’s called Circle Casting. Close your eyes and picture a sphere of white light around you that nothing can penetrate. Now, I’m going to go over there and walk towards you slowly. Keep your eyes closed, and when you feel me touching your aura, say, “Now.”’

  My socks, by now, are mostly completely drenched. My toes are fizzing or dead. There’s a spreading patch of damp up my right trouser leg, where a sopping undone lace on my left shoe has been hitting it. Obediently, I picture a buzzing wall of pearly energy surrounding me. Some more time passes. Then, I secretly open one eye and sneak a look at Stephen to check what he’s up to. I watch him for a second, inching forward through the long grass with his eyes scrunched shut, stroking the air with his hand as he goes. I close my eyes again.

  ‘Now,’ I say.

  ‘Very good,’ he replies. ‘This protective shield is what stone circles maintain permanently.’

  ‘Will I need to use these to protect me if I’m doing divination?’ I ask.

  ‘That all depends on the divination,’ he says, walking towards me. ‘The only dangerous tool is the Ouija board. That’s an unfinished device. It opens the door to allow anything to come in.’

  ‘What about pendulums or dowsing rods?’ I say. ‘I was told that they’re dangerous because you’re asking something to possess you.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he says, smiling, basking his face in the miserable wet air. ‘They’re harmless. They’re not possessing you, they’re possessing the object.’

  As we squelch our way out of the field, I tell Stephen about my mission.

  ‘I’m trying to find the truth about ghosts,’ I confide.

  ‘Oh, that’s all to do with iron,’ he says casually.

  ‘It is?’ I say.

  ‘Yes, it’s often called the Stone Tape theory. We know that ferric oxide or chromium dioxide can record information. We use this process in everyday things like videos, cassettes, things like that. Now, iron is everywhere in nature. It holds information, if it’s magnetised in the right way. So, very probably, ghosts are just repeats of information that is stored in natural iron. It’s as if someone’s rewound the tape and just played it again.’

  Stephen explains that if we die a traumatic death by beheading, say, or pace up and down a corridor in a state of extreme distress because the Roundheads are coming, then this information is somehow stored in the natural iron around us. Then, elements of our situation can be recorded and, under certain circumstances, re-transmitted as headless ghosts or disembodied footsteps. Maybe, I think, people that we call ‘psychic’ simply have the ability to pick up on these natural recordings better than others. It’s a compelling theory. And the best thing about it is that it promises a rational, unspiritual explanation for the existence of ghosts. It’s absolutely God- and afterlife-free.

  3

  ‘Strange patterns’

  I WAS EXPECTING the British Library to be a huge, crannied and spired book-cathedral. It would be riddled with corridors and ante-rooms, all dotted about with green leather, inkwells and filled with still, church air. I’d work in hallowed silence in a long-forgotten ghost wing, the cuddle of light from my desk lamp the only illumination in the room.

  But it’s nothing like that. From the outside it looks like an immense warehouse on an industrial estate, built only for the eyes of fork-lift drivers and twilight hauliers. It’s all sheer redbrick walls and no visible windows, and its only architectural feature is its brutish featurelessness. It’s a joy-killing place of deadeningly functional aesthetics. If the British Library was a book, it would be the Yellow Pages.

  And it’s no better on the inside. It feels like a drab municipal sports centre, filled with students and their dreamy musk of stale alcohol, cheap food and sex. Worst of all, instead of there being a long-forgotten ghost wing, there’s a computer screen into which I have to type to order my choice of book. It’s like Argos.

  I’m here for the purposes of research. Now that I’m fully equipped with four psychic protection techniques, I thought it was time I tooled myself up with some proper knowledge. For half a moment, I thought that Stephen the Druid might have nailed the whole ghost problem with his Stone Tape theory. But then I realised that this only really explains replay hauntings. It doesn’t actually discount any of the things I witnessed in Philadelphia. For that, I need the assistance of the massed ranks of the planet’s ghost researchers. And I need their help quick. Because for me, on the day to day, things are starting to get weird. The more I explore this murky and ancient cellar of the human experience, the less everything else makes sense. The steely, rational scaffold poles that used to structure my ordinary life are slowly breaking down, and through all the holes that have appeared in my world, the ghosts are swooping in. I can feel their chilly slipstreams on my skin as I lapse into yet another daydream in the office. I sit at my desk and ruminate on death, hell and my earthly moral legacy, and I wonder if they can see you in the bath.

  By the end of the morning, I’ve gone order crazy, and there’s a toppling pile of ghost knowledge on my desk. The first thing I learn about is crisis apparitions. These are one of the most commonly experienced ghostly phenomena – and the saddest. They involve a person seeing the spectre of somebody at the moment of their death. U
sually, these ghosts appear to people that they loved in life. It’s a final goodbye, often accompanied by a soothing reassurance that death is not life’s windy, desolate terminus. Diana Norman, wife of famous film critic Barry, has spoken about a ‘smart, intelligent’ friend who told her this story: ‘I was at school at a convent. My favourite teacher was a nun called Sister Bridget. Then I got ill and had to spend some time in the convent infirmary. One day I looked up to see that Sister Bridget had come into my room. She smiled at me and I smiled back. Then she turned away and just walked through the wall. I began to scream at that, and the nuns came running in to see what was the matter. I told them that I had seen Sister Bridget and that she had disappeared. Then they told me that Sister Bridget had been taken ill and had died, a few minutes before I saw her.’

  On the opposite end of the horror-scale are poltergeists. These are the terrifying bully ghosts that descend into people’s lives and cause havoc in their houses. Poltergeist is German for ‘noisy ghost’ and one of their chief distinctions, as Lance told me in Michelham, is that they are people- rather than place-centred. Every case has a human ‘epicentre’, most often a teenager, usually a girl on the verge of negotiating puberty. In a book called Deliverance, an expert churchman called Canon Michael Perry explains:

  The single most frequent cause of appeals for help are poltergeists. An attack often begins with small noises such as bangs, rattles, knockings, thumps or clicks … after that, the effects rise to a climax and may include any of the following:

  • Rappings and knockings.

  • Objects may be seen to move of their own accord and in a bizarre way, defying the laws of motion and gravity, sailing in curved trajectories, or changing course at a sharp angle.