The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  Terror of Moonlight Ghost Clash

  Source and date: News of the World, 20 April 1980

  It was the eerie hour of 2.30 a.m. when Mrs Liz Reeves and her husband got back to their country home one night. Suddenly they found themselves in the middle of a terrifying “ghost battle”. As the couple cringed against a wall, they were surrounded by cries and the clash of arms. But in the bright moonlight they could see . . . nothing. Mrs Reeves of the Old Smithy, Holme Hale, Norfolk said, “It was frightening. We felt we were in the middle of a battle with people shouting and horses shying.” She explained, “The crash of swords did not seem against other swords, but against wood as though they were hitting wooden staves. After a few minutes the sounds moved away and then all the local dogs started howling. We thought about ringing the police, but they wouldn’t have believed us.” Then came another eerie discovery. Mrs Reeves said, “I did some research and found there was an uprising here by the peasants against the gentry in the 1600s. I never believed in this sort of thing, but I’d like to hear an explanation.” A Psychical Research Society spokesman said, “We have been getting reports of almost identical incidents. This is an interesting case which we will investigate.”

  In the Mood with Glenn’s Ghost

  Source and date: Sunday People, 2 November 1980

  Big Band fan John Robinson says he has swinging company when he listens to the music of Ted Heath and Glenn Miller – their ghosts. Heath died in 1969, Miller in 1944 – but according to John they still get a kick out of their old records. “It all started after an amazing experience,” said John, a 52-year-old bus driver who lives at Neville Square, Lynemouth, Northumberland. “My wife Jean and I were watching Jack Parnell’s band playing Glenn Miller’s music on TV. Suddenly I felt there was someone else in the room. I looked at Jean and I could clearly see Glenn Miller’s face in front of hers. When the band played his theme, Moonlight Serenade, there were tears in his eyes.” John went on, “Ted Heath made his appearance in a similar manner. Since then they have come regularly. Always I see their faces in front of Jean’s. There is never much conversation between us. They simply ask us to go on playing their music. I’m convinced we have the two band leaders as company.”

  Friar Held after Apparition

  Source and date: The Times, 13 October 1981

  A Roman Catholic friar in Yugoslavia has been arrested and is awaiting trial after a controversy which followed the alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary, according to the Belgrade newspaper, Vecernje Novosti, today. The paper also said eleven people were expelled from the Communist Party and 48 others given Party warnings for visiting the site of the alleged apparition in the southern town of Citluk, where six girls said they saw the Madonna in July. Thousands of people have streamed into Citluk to visit the site, and authorities have claimed that the Roman Catholic Church is trying to use the event for political purposes.

  Ghost at the Dentists

  Source and date: Daily Telegraph, 21 February 1982

  Germans love a ghost story. A weird tale that has emerged from mist-shrouded Lower Bavaria has grabbed the Gothic reaches of their imagination with greater force than any other in recent years. For the past eleven months, Dr Kurt Bachseitz, a small-town dentist, has been plagued by a phantom voice which just won’t be silenced. The disembodied voice – which answers to the name “Chopper” – first confined itself to Dr Bachseitz’s telephone and it was easy to dismiss it as a practical joke. But then it began to issue from various outlets in Dr Bachseitz’s surgery which is in a quiet street in the small Bavarian town of Neutraubling. Its staccato, robot-like monotone would issue forth from electric power points, light fittings and pieces of surgical equipment, haranguing Dr Bachseitz and declaring undying love for his pretty seventeen-year-old assistant. When the voice began to disturb Dr Bachseitz as he attended patients – sometimes lecturing to him from the washbasin at the side of the dentist’s chair – he called in the police and issued a private summons of harassment against “person or persons unknown”. A Post Office team from Darmstadt travelled 150 miles to the town and spent several days and £15,000 investigating the mystery. They left in bewilderment.

  Ghost Miner Scares a Pit

  Source and date: Sun, 18 March 1982

  A ghost in a coalmine has scared young pitman Steve Dimbleby, 23, into packing up his £150-a-week job at Silverwood Colliery, Rotherham, Yorkshire. He ran screaming for a mile underground after coming face to face with the frightening phantom miner. Steve, of Sunnyside, Rotherham, described the apparition: “He wore an old-fashioned square pitman’s helmet, a waistcoat and grubby shirt. There was a light in the helmet. He bent his head and shone his light in my face. I realized there was something odd. Then when I looked at his face he had no features. It was blank – no eyes, no nose, no mouth.” Steve froze with fear when he saw the ghost then ran. “I was ranting and raving and crying. I’ve hardly slept since it happened on Sunday night. I’d rather go on the dole that down that pit.” Coal Board chiefs have now switched Steve to a £100-a-week surface job. They have also confirmed that fourteen years ago, a miner died where the spectre appeared. [In October 1887, another miner, Gary Pine, 19, reported seeing a ghost “in overalls and safety helmet slide through a concrete wall and vanish” in the Cotgrave Colliery in Nottinghamshire. According to the Sun, other miners were “refusing to do Gary’s job other than in pairs”.]

  Officialdom Kills Party for Ghosts

  Source and date: Observer, 6 September 1982

  Strange legal action looms in Honking where a religious body has been denied a site for this month’s traditional Hungry Ghosts Festival. This is held annually in the seventh month of the lunar year when the doors of Hell are supposed to open and the ghosts are allowed to emerge for temporary release and enjoyment. The festival is organized by the Chinese communities as a hypocritical welcome to the ghosts to prevent them from harassing their living descendants. The main ceremony in Hong Kong has been held for the past eighty-five years and is usually attended by more than 100,000 people. [Despite this threat, the Hungry Ghosts Festival took place in Hong Kong and also Singapore where a threat to some of the street operas or wayangs held in side streets and car parks all over the island was averted.]

  Sellers Spooks the Pink Panther

  Source and date: News of the World, 31 October 1982

  The ghost of Peter Sellers is haunting the new Pink Panther movie, the producer reckons. A jinx has hit Trail of the Pink Panther in which Sellers stars two years after his death. Unused film from the actor’s previous Panther movies is being slotted in with newly shot scenes. But producer Tony Adams says that many unexplained incidents have disrupted production. “I think Peter’s up there being as mischievous as he usually was down here. Things that shouldn’t have happened suddenly did – making it difficult to match new film with the old. Costumes were lost even after they had been checked many times. Sets that worked perfectly suddenly didn’t and a lot of scenes were jinxed. We wondered if Peter might be getting at us.” Peter Sellers believed he could communicate with the dead and claimed his mother guided his career from the grave.

  Halloween – United States 1982

  Source and date: Sunday Times, 31 October 1982

  With detectives still hunting the Tylenol murderer in Chicago and a rash of copycats finding new products to poison, millions of parents across America face an unhappy decision. Do they allow their children to go on the streets gathering sweets from neighbours in the traditional celebration of Halloween? Over the past decade there has been a vague Halloween fear ever since razor blades were found hidden in an apple given to children, mercury poisoned tablets in Denver and insecticides injected into orange juice in Miami. American children look forward to Halloween as English children look forward to Guy Fawkes Night. They dress up as ghosts or ghouls and indulge in “Trick or treat?”. But this year some towns across the country are banning trick or treating; others are stepping up police patrols and all are insisting that parents
make a thorough check of what their children eat. The combination of genuine grounds for fear plus a degree of hysteria has reached the level where some cities are offering free X-ray services in case you want to check for anything some demented soul might feel like injecting into sweets. Real ghosts had better take heed, too!

  Bargain at Ghost Hotel

  Source and date: Sunday Mirror, 13 February 1983

  Four British holidaymakers believe they have stayed at a phantom hotel in France – as the guests of a group of 80-year-old ghosts. Mystified Len Gisby, his wife Cynthia and Geoff and Pauline Simpson stopped at the quaint little inn near Montelimar during a trip through the country. A number of spine-tingling experiences left them convinced that they were caught up in some strange supernatural experience. Their suspicions were first aroused when they discovered the hotel had no modern amenities and was occupied by people wearing strange early twentieth-century clothing. Stranger still was the bill. It came to 19 francs – about 50p per head – for an evening meal, the bedrooms and breakfast. But the biggest shock came when they decided to find their strange hotel on the way back from holidaying in Spain . . . it had disappeared. Now Len and Cynthia from Dover are travelling back to France in a bid to solve the mystery. Geoff, also from Dover, said, “There’s no doubt that this happened to us.”

  Spectre Inspectors

  Source and date: Radio Times, 12 March 1983

  Good news for ghost hunters who don’t fancy spending endless hours in some spooky place waiting for strange things to happen – soon the task of checking out the unknown could be done by a computer. Researchers in Cambridge are adapting a small computer to keep a round-the-clock watch for ghosts and poltergeists. Under laboratory conditions the computer will be programmed to switch on cameras, video equipment and tape recorders if anything out of the ordinary begins to happen. It will print out any changes in temperature to check the old saying among people who claim to have seen a ghost that “suddenly everything went cold”. And because many alleged sightings remain unproven due to equipment mysteriously failing to work, the computer will record any unusual fluctuations in the electricity. Tony Cornell, a leading official of the Society for Psychical Research who has spent thirty years investigating hauntings, said “When we investigate we have to conform to very high standards. We started to develop the computer just before Christmas and it could be of great help. Personally, I have never seen a ghost – but I have met hundreds of sane and sensible people who say they have.”

  John Lennon’s Ghost Visits Yoko

  Source and date: Sunday Mirror, 29 May 1983

  John Lennon’s ghost is said to be haunting the New York apartment where the ex-Beatle was murdered. Several people claim to have seen his ghostly figure wearing familiar round glasses. Friends of his wife, Yoko Ono, say that John’s spirit has spoken to her. Musician Joey Harrow, who lives nearby, is convinced that he saw John’s ghost at the entrance to the Dakota building – the spot where he was shot three years ago. “He was surrounded by an eerie light,” said Joey. Amanda Mores, a writer who was with Joey at the time, says she also saw Lennon’s ghost. “I wanted to go up and talk to him, but something in the way he looked at me said no.” Yoko, who still lives in the same block with their son, Sean, claims to have seen John sitting at his white piano and that on one occasion he said, “Don’t be afraid – I am still with you.” [A year later, on 21 October 1984, Mirror reported that Lennon’s ghost was also haunting the cellar of the Jacaranda Club in Slater Street where he used to play with Stuart Sutcliffe, the group’s original bass player, who died in Hamburg. Licensee Isabel Daley said, “There were two shadowy figures of young men arguing. I recognized one of them as a young John Lennon from photographs I had seen. He said, ‘Come on Audrey, that’s not right.’ I shot up the stairs when I realized they were ghosts.” Audrey Reynolds, who was a barmaid in the club in the early 1960s, commented, “It’s uncanny. John used to row over everything.”]

  Charles and the Phychics

  Source and date: Sunday Mirror, 8 January 1984

  A fascination for the mysterious world of the paranormal has earned Prince Charles a new title. It is as though he has become the “Prince of Psychics” following the disclosure that he is backing the University of Wales as it tries to start a course in parapsychology and create Britain’s first professor in the subject. Never before has a member of the Royal Family been seen to be so actively involved in the setting up of such a centre which will be devoted to investigating everything from poltergeists and spoon-bending to extra-sensory perception. Prince Charles has always shown an interest in subjects like psychology and alternative medicine and in a letter to Dr Cecil Bevan, the Principal of the University of Wales, about the professorship, Charles asked, “Why don’t we have a go at tasking up this scheme?” Inquiries by the Sunday Mirror have uncovered details of an astonishing meeting between the prince and Winifred Rushford, one of the world’s leading psychotherapists, at her flat in Edinburgh in the spring of 1983. Dr Rushford has since died, but her daughter, Dr Diana Bates, who was present at the meeting, told us what happened; “It was as if the prince and my mother had known each other all their lives. My mother believed there must have been some sort of psychic contact between them already.” Dr Bates has refused to reveal whether the prince had voiced any wish to “contact” any relatives who have passed away.

  Five-Star Haunts

  Source and date: Daily Mail, 14 August 1984

  If you hear strange noises in the night at your hotel don’t tell the plumber – tell the promotions manager. He’ll hope your room is haunted. Britain’s inns are so proud of their non-paying guests that they now include a ghost write-up in their brochures. Latest to cash in is the huge Trusthouse Forte group which has a new brochure listing its nightly visitors. They include a tragic maid who rustles through rooms at the Berystede Inn, looking for jewels. She died in a fire in the last century, having rushed back into the blazing inn to rescue gifts of jewels given to her over the years. At the White Hart, Lincoln, there is a strange fat man who appears, wringing his hands, and asking about his lost ginger jar. The Dolphin, Southampton has a maid who walks two feet above the floor – the level of the floorboards two centuries ago. One brewery used to employ an official ghost hunter. In those days they wanted to get rid of them. Today the ghosts are good business.

  Bishop Saw Ghost of Grandmother

  Source and date: The Times, 15 August 1984

  The Bishop of Salisbury, the Right Rev John Baker, recently appointed as the next head of the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission, believes in ghosts and saw one when he was aged four. He discloses in his diocesan newsletter that he saw the ghost of his grandmother shortly after her death. The bishop says he was unaware of her death at the time and told his mother, “I saw Gran last night. She came in and kissed me goodnight and walked around the bed and then she went. But she did look funny. She was wearing a white sheet.”

  The Ghostbusters in England

  Source and date: Evening Standard, 16 October 1984

  The phenomenal success of Ghostbusters, the sixth biggest moneymaking film in America about three parapsychologists who go into business to combat a plague of poltergeists, has inspired a group of real-life ghostbusters to visit Britain. Lead by “paranormal consultant” to the film, Nonie Fagatt, a healer and psychical researcher, they have been scouring the country looking for spooks. Says Nonie, “The best ghosts are the English ghosts because you look after them so well.” Their mission has taken the ghostbusters to some of the best- and least-known haunts with great success and members of the group claim to have seen the ghost of Cardinal Wolsey at Hampton Court, Elizabeth Hobby of Bisham Abbey who spoke through one woman “in strange tongues” and a Roman soldier who kept another female awake all night by “prodding her” at the Francis Hotel in Bath. Nonie, whose last exorcism was televised in America, made a point of visiting the Tower of London, but found it too full of people. She said, “You wouldn’t even know it if y
ou saw an Elizabethan ghost in your peripheral vision where most ghosts are seen. And the linoleum floor robs you of your psychic grounding. But you still cannot fail to feel the energy. The place cries out of torture and killings. It makes my chest go tight and then my throat.”

  Ghostly Gunslinger Leads to Gold

  Source and date: Dallas Morning Herald, 7 April 1985

  Prospector Si Burris of Albuquerque had had another fruitless day searching for gold in southeastern New Mexico. But as the sixty-year-old former rodeo rider set off for home he spotted a young man far off in the distance, down the ravine where he was headed. Hoping for a bit of company, Si hurried along to catch up with him. And when he did he decided that his new companion was not very friendly. Said Si, “He had sandy yellow hair, a gun belt and an insolent sneer. I turned to leave, but he challenged me. He said, ‘What’s your hurry? You’re a prospector looking for gold, right? Go up that rise. There’ll be a valley ahead on your right. Go down into it and when you see an old axe handle stuck into a tree dig beneath its trunk.’ Then the stranger turned and walked away.” Surprised, Si shouted after him to ask who he was. “He looked at me hard and said, ‘Friend, call me William Bonney. You’d know me as Billy the Kid.’ I figured he must be drunk or joking.” Nevertheless, Si hurried off and to his amazement found the tree with the axe handle. He dug down and found his gold. “It was in the rotted remains of a Wells Fargo moneybag. There were old gold and silver coins minted in the 1870s and 1890s.” Historians now believe the coins may well be part of the loot Billy the Kid stole during his outlaw career. The $10,000 worth of booty almost matches exactly the description of one of his hold-ups of a Wells Fargo stagecoach.