It was a brave challenge from the feisty little woman who produced several more books on the topic, including Light and Darkness (1850) and Ghosts and Family Legends (1858) – sadly, though, she did not live long enough to see the “men and women of science” take notice. But a decade later, on 6 January 1882, a group of academics and scientists led by Professor W F Barrett, the Professor of Physics at the Royal College of Science, Dublin, Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-developer of the theory of evolution, and the philosopher Professor Henry Sidgwick, gathered to form a society for the “study of abnormal happenings”. The aims of the group were clearly stated in their original manifesto – and embodied the principles that the Society for Psychical Research, as the group named themselves, have followed ever since:
1. Examination of the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, otherwise than through the recognized sensory channels.
2. Inquiry into the alleged phenomena of clairvoyance.
3. Investigation of reports of apparitions and auditory and tactile impressions coinciding with some external event (as for instance a death), or giving information previously unknown to the percipient, or being seen by two or more persons independently of each other.
4. Examination of alleged communications from the dead, whether through automatic writing, trance-speaking, or otherwise.
5. Inquiry into various physical phenomena apparently inexplicable by known laws of nature, and commonly referred by spiritualists to the agency of extra-human intelligences.
6. The collection and collation of information and evidence bearing on these subjects.
The forward-thinking Professor Sidgwick, who had married Eleanor Balfour in 1876 – converting her to feminism in the process – was installed as the first President of the SPR and insisted on the admission of his dark-haired attractive wife, already a gifted mathematician and educator, to serve as the administrator. The partnership was to ensure the establishment and furtherance of the objectives of the society.
Eleanor Sidgwick, in particular, played an important role in the group’s activities. She took part in the investigation of several hauntings, sat in at séances with various mediums and generally used her energy, industry and clarity of thought to document the enquiries for the SPR files and edit the Society’s Journal. Modestly, she refused to put her name on much of this material, anxious that the credit should go to the Society as a whole. In 1920, Eleanor cautiously admitted one significant conclusion she had reached in the third volume of the SPR’s Proceedings:
“I can only say that, having made every effort to exercise reasonable scepticism, I yet do not feel equal to the degree of unbelief in human testimony to avoid at least provisionally reaching the conclusion that there are, in a sense, haunted houses, i.e. houses in which similar quasi-human apparitions have occurred at different times to different inhabitants, under circumstances which exclude the hypothesis of suggestion or expectation.”
Much that has followed in the development of “ghost hunting” can be traced back to the assiduous work of Eleanor Sidgwick – not forgetting, of course, the promptings of Catherine Crow. Writing in The Observer of 26 June, 1983 when the Arthur Koestler bequest of £500,000 had just been announced for the “foundation of an institute for the study of paranormal phenomena”, Ruth Brandon, author of The Spiritualists (1983) paid tribute to the work of the two ladies in bringing science to bear on superstition. In particular, just how far-sighted Miss Crowe had been to push her convictions a century earlier: “One of the most telling weapons in the armoury of believers in the paranormal now is the number of distinguished scientists who have, after investigation, concluded that it is a reality.”
ELEANOR SIDGWICK, the formidable first administrator of the Society for Psychical Research, was responsible for supervising many of the group’s early investigations and contributed greatly to the gathering of knowledge about paranormal phenomena. Her work led to her being made president in 1908 and “president of honour” in 1930, shortly before her death. Among the many ghost stories she investigated was the “Morton Ghost” described as “one of the best authenticated cases of a haunted house” where four members of a Cheltenham family named Despard repeatedly saw the figure of a “tall lady, dressed in black of a soft woollen material” descending the stairs to their drawing room. The haunting started in 1882 and continued until 1901, the SPR investigation eventually concluding that the ghost was probably that of Mrs Imogen Swinhoe, the unhappy wife of a retired civil servant who had died of drink, aged 41, on 23 September 1878, just four years before the haunting started. In this account compiled by Eleanor Sidgwick and typical of its time, the name and address of the family have been disguised to preserve their anonymity.
MISS MORTON’S GHOST
Location and date:
All Saints Road, Cheltenham, 1901
The house is a commonplace square building, dating from about 1860. Its first tenant was Mr S., whose first wife died in the house (in August, year uncertain). Mr S. married again, but his second marriage was unhappy. Both he and his wife took to drink. In order to prevent his second wife securing his first wife’s jewels, he had a secret receptacle constructed for them under the floor of the morning room or study. In that room he died in July 1876, his widow dying in another part of England in September 1878. With the exception of a brief tenancy of six months, terminated by death, the house appears to have remained unoccupied from the summer of 1876 until March 1882, when it was taken by Captain Morton. Neither Captain Morton nor his wife, an invalid, ever saw anything in the house. The eldest sister, Mrs K., an occasional visitor, saw the figure on two or three occasions. Of the four other sisters, three at one time or another saw the ghost; and so did the younger brother. Miss Morton, the chief percipient and the recorder of the case, was aged about nineteen at the time. The first appearance was in June 1882, and is thus described by her:
“I had gone up to my room, but was not yet in bed, when I heard someone at the door, and went to it, thinking it might be my mother. On opening the door, I saw no one; but on going a few steps along the passage, I saw the figure of a tall lady, dressed in black, standing at the head of the stairs. After a few moments she descended the stairs, and I followed for a short distance, feeling curious what it could be. I had only a small piece of candle and it suddenly burnt itself out; and being unable to see more, I went back to my room.
“The figure was that of a tall lady, dressed in black of a soft woollen material, judging from the slight sound in moving. The face was hidden in a handkerchief held in the right hand. This is all I noticed then; but on further occasions when I was able to observe her more closely, I saw the upper part of the left side of the forehead, and a little of the hair above. Her left hand was nearly hidden by her sleeve and a fold of her dress. As she held it down a portion of a widow’s cuff was visible on both wrists, so that the whole impression was that of a lady in widow’s weeds. There was no cap on the head, but a general effect of blackness suggests a bonnet, with long veil or a hood.
Plan of Ground Floor
“During the next two years – from 1882 to 1884 – I saw the figure about half a dozen times; at first at long intervals, and afterwards at shorter, but I only mentioned these appearances to one friend, who did not speak of them to anyone.
“After the first time, I followed the figure several times downstairs into the drawing room, where she remained a variable time, generally standing to the right-hand side of the bow window. From the drawing room she went along the passage towards the garden door, where she always disappeared.
“The first time I spoke to her was on the 29th January, 1884. I opened the drawing-room door softly and went in, standing just by it. She came in past me and walked to the sofa and stood still there, so I went up to her and asked her if I could help her. She moved, and I thought she was going to speak, but she only gave a slight gasp and moved towards the door. Just by the door I spoke to her again, but she seemed as if she wer
e quite unable to speak. She walked into the hall, then by the side door she seemed to disappear as before. In May and June 1884, I tried some experiments, fastening strings with marine glue across the stairs at different heights from the ground.
“I also attempted to touch her, but she always eluded me. It was not that there was nothing there to touch, but that she always seemed to be beyond me, and if followed into a corner simply disappeared.
“During these two years the only noises I heard were those of slight pushes against my bedroom door, accompanied by footsteps; and if I looked out on hearing these sounds, I invariably saw the figure. Her footstep is very light, you can hardly hear it, except on the linoleum, and then only like a person walking softly with thin boots on. The appearances during the next two months – July and August, 1884 – became much more frequent; indeed they were then at their maximum, from which time they seem gradually to have decreased, until now they seem to have ceased.”
PROFESSOR WILLIAM FLETCHER BARRETT had been engaged in investigating supernatural phenomena for some years before he helped to found the Society for Psychical Research in 1882. Driven by an academic’s interest in every phase of the occult, he led a number of the Society’s early investigations into stories of haunted houses. The professor’s objective accounts appeared in three important books, Psychical Research (1911), On The Threshold of the Unseen (1918) and Death-Bed Visions (1926). In this episode he describes his own experiences at two hauntings, the second in company with Eleanor Sidgwick’s husband, Henry.
A REMARKABLE HAUNTING
Location and date:
Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, UK, 1902
A remarkable case of haunting occurred some years ago in a manor house in the midland counties of England. I was invited to investigate the case and was offered hospitality. Though the ghost did not appear to me, whilst I slept in the haunted room, yet I heard certain mysterious knockings and some other disturbances which accompanied it; nor could I find any satisfactory explanation of these sounds. The first-hand evidence on behalf of the ghostly figure was, however, abundant and surprising. It was seen in the house independently by nearly a dozen different persons, who at first believing it to be a practical joke, tried to catch it, but it was uncatchable and impalpable; the latter was proved by a young officer, who when staying in the house saw the phantom one night, rose from his bed, followed it and shot through the figure, which moved on unconcerned. The children of my host, from whom the story of the ghost had been carefully concealed, described the same figure, which did not frighten, but rather amused, them, as they said they “could see the wall of the schoolroom through its body.”
Another case of haunting investigated by myself and also by Professor Sidgwick occurred not far from my own residence in Kingstown. Here the phantom of a woman wrapped in a grey shawl was seen on the stairs and in a particular bedroom of a house tenanted by a lady and her brother. The figure was seen by different occupants of the room and by a child of five years old, though none were previously aware of the ghostly visitant: the door of the room was locked, yet still the figure made its appearance to the occupier of the room. All attempts at a normal explanation failed and the occupiers had at last to leave the house. Subsequently it was found that some previous tenants of the house had been troubled by inexplicable disturbances of various kinds, details of which they gave.
FRANK PODMORE is remembered as the most sceptical and thorough of the early members of the SPR whose life ended tragically when his investigations of supernatural phenomena were making huge contributions to the group and its status. A government librarian by profession, he was early converted to spiritualism but became disillusioned by the widespread fraud he found among a number of mediums. His books, including Phantasms of the Living (1886) and The Nature of the Supernatural (1908) were groundbreaking treatises in which he advanced thought-provoking theories about the nature of ghosts and poltergeists. In August 1910, he suddenly went missing while on holiday in the Malvern Hills and his body was found in a pool near the local golf course at Malvern. The inquest revealed that there were no marks of injury on the corpse, which had been in the water for three or four days. A verdict of “found drowned” was returned on one of the century’s great pioneer ghost hunters. The following extraordinary story is from an essay “Apparitions and Thought Transference” written in the decade before his death.
THE ROTATING MAN
Location and date:
Bracknell, Berkshire, UK, 1904
I was sitting alone in the library one evening finishing some work after hours, when it suddenly occurred to me that I should miss the last train to H., where I was then living, if I did not make haste. It was then 10.55, and the last train left X. at 11.5. I gathered up some books in one hand, took the lamp in the other, and prepared to leave the librarian’s room, which communicated by a passage with the main room of the library. As my lamp illumined this passage, I saw, apparently at the further end of it, a man’s face. I instantly thought a thief had got into the library. This was by no means impossible, and the probability of it had occurred to me before. I turned back into my room, put down the books, and took a revolver from the safe, and, holding the lamp cautiously behind me, I made my way along the passage – which had a corner, behind which I thought my thief might be lying in wait – into the main room. Here I saw no one, but the room was large and encumbered with bookcases. I called out loudly to the intruder to show himself several times, more with the hope of attracting a passing policeman than of drawing the intruder. Then I saw a face looking round one of the bookcases. I say looking round, but it had an odd appearance, as if the body were in the bookcase, as the face came so closely to the edge and I could see no body. The face was pallid and hairless, and the orbits of the eyes were very deep. I advanced towards it, and as I did so I saw an old man with high shoulders seem to rotate out of the end of the bookcase, and with his back towards me and with a shuffling gait walk rather quickly from the bookcase to the door of a small lavatory, which opened from the library and had no other access. I heard no noise. I followed the man at once into the lavatory, and to my extreme surprise found no one there. I examined the window (about 14 inches by 12 inches), and found it closed and fastened. I opened it and looked out. It opened into a well, the bottom of which, 10 feet below, was a skylight, and the top open to the sky some 20 feet above. It was in the middle of the building, and no one could have dropped into it without smashing the glass, nor climbed out of it without a ladder – but no one was there. Nor had there been anything like time for a man to get out of the window, as I followed the intruder instantly. Completely mystified, I even looked into the little cupboard under the fixed basin. There was nowhere hiding for a child, and I confess I began to experience for the first time what novelists describe as an “eerie” feeling.
I left the library, and found I had missed my train.
Next morning I mentioned what I had seen to a local clergyman, who, on hearing my description, said, “Why, that’s old Q.” Soon after I saw a photograph (from a drawing) of Q., and the resemblance was certainly striking. Q. had lost all his hair, eyebrows and all, from, I believe, a gunpowder accident. His walk was a peculiar, rapid, high-shouldered shuffle. Later enquiry proved he had died about the time of the year at which I saw the figure.
Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE is, of course, famous for the creation of Sherlock Holmes, though he was also a fine writer of historical and ghost stories. His interest in psychical research began as a young man and as early as 1887, he wrote a letter to Light magazine about some telepathic experiments he was carrying out. He joined the SPR in 1891 and investigated a number of cases, becoming convinced of survival after death and eventually converting to spiritualism, as he revealed in his books The New Revelation (1918), The Vital Message (1919) and The Edge of the Unknown (1930). Probably the most interesting haunted house case Doyle looked into occurred in Dorsetshire, when he was accompanied by Frank Podmore and a Doctor Scott. The trio bolted the doors and
windows, laid worsted thread across the stairs and sat up for two nights. The results did not entirely convince Podmore, but certainly left an impression on Conan Doyle, as he explained when recounting the events in 1916.
THE CASE OF THE BURIED BONES
Location and date: Charmouth, Dorsetshire, 1907
About this time I had an interesting experience, for I was one of three delegates sent by the Psychical Society to sit up in a haunted house. It was one of these poltergeist cases, where noises and foolish tricks had gone on for some years, very much like the classical case of John Wesley’s family at Epworth in 1726, or the case of the Fox family at Hydesville near Rochester in 1848, which was the starting-point of modern spiritualism. Nothing sensational came of our journey, and yet it was not entirely barren.
On the first night nothing occurred. On the second, there were tremendous noises, sounds like someone beating a table with a stick. We had, of course, taken every precaution, and we could not explain the noises; but at the same time we could not swear that some ingenious practical joke had not been played upon us. There the matter ended for the time.
Some years afterwards, however, I met a member of the family who occupied the house, and he told me that after our visit the bones of a child, evidently long buried, had been dug up in the garden. You must admit that this was very remarkable.
Haunted houses are rare, and houses with buried human beings in their gardens are also, we will hope, rare. That they should have both united in one house is surely some argument for the truth of the phenomena. It is interesting to remember that in the case of the Fox family there was also some word of human bones and evidence of murder being found in the cellar, though an actual crime was never established. I have little doubt that if the Wesley family could have got upon speaking terms with their persecutor, they would also have come upon some motive for the persecution. It almost seems as if a life cut suddenly and violently short had some store of unspent vitality which could still manifest itself in a strange, mischievous fashion.
The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings Page 13