The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  At Bramshill House at Hartley Wintney, near Basingstoke in Hampshire, Sandford heard the story of a pretty young apparition wearing only a veil who appeared in 1944 to a footman of King Michael and Queen Marie of Rumania, who were residents in the house during the Second World War. The ghost was believed to be that of a young girl who had died horribly on her wedding day while taking part in a game of hide-and-seek and become trapped inside an old trunk. Her skeleton, still in the remnants of her wedding gown, was not found for years and then inspired a famous Victorian ballad, “The Bridal Chest of Bramshill”. A member of the staff at the mansion explained to the man from the Sun:

  “She appeared so vividly to this footman that he tried to give her a cuddle. But she dissolved in his arms as he tried to embrace her. All that she left behind was a strong smell of beautiful flowers. The scent of the tragic bride has since been smelt by a number of visitors to Bramshill.”

  Perhaps, though, the most remarkable story that Jeremy Sandford unearthed concerned a devout young nun, Sister Maude, who fell in love with a good-looking monk from a monastery close to her nunnery at Weston-on-the-Green near Oxford. Although like all those who had taken holy orders, the couple were forbidden to have sex, the couple met in secret to spend nights of lovemaking in the monk’s cell. Their trysts were finally discovered, however, and the lovers were seized one night while in bed together. Sister Maude was sentenced to death for breaking her vow of chastity. Years later, the monastery was turned into a hotel – and guests have repeatedly told stories of a ghostly female appearing in one particular bedroom. Nicholas Price, the proprietor, elaborated to Sandford:

  “Sometimes they have a feeling of dread which may be connected with the nun’s terror at the moment she and her lover were discovered. Maude was apparently chained to a stake and burned to death in what are now the grounds of the hotel. But her ghost is a very friendly soul, and guests who have been haunted always remark on that, no matter how frightened they are. I have even hung around in the bedroom sometimes in the hope that she will make a pass – so far she hasn’t. There are apparently other, less well-known versions of the story. One says that Maude was the girlfriend of quite a few monks . . . not just one.”

  Maybe the man from Weston-on-the-Green should try a night at the eighteenth-century Old Vic public house in Winchester Street, Basingstoke, where a “sexy spirit” was said to be sharing the bed of landlord Bob William. A report in the Sunday People of February 1979 quoted Bob: “My beauty sleep is being ruined by this ghost. It’s as though there is a woman lying next to me making love. She sounds a very passionate sort of woman. Her sighs and heavy breathing often keep me awake until all hours of the night. I’ve always been a bit sceptical about ghosts, but this has really got me thinking . . .”

  A not dissimilar story made news in America in April 1989. A young Hollywood actress – who remained anonymous – found herself sharing a bed with the amorous ghost of the great movie heart-throb of the Silent Era, Rudolf Valentino. She told her story to Sherry Hansen-Steiger, author of Hollywood and the Supernatural (1990):

  “She felt a heavy weight press down on the edge of her bed as she was drifting off to sleep one night in the old apartment building known as Valentino Place which, according to Hollywood tradition, was once an elegant party site favoured by the actor and his intimates. For several minutes the 28-year-old actress was too paralysed by fear to move. A body of what she assumed to be a man then stretched out bedside her; she was covered only by a thin sheet. As he pressed up to her and began breathing heavily, she at last had the courage to open her eyes. ‘I saw the handsome face of Valentino lying on my pillow,’ she said. ‘I was so terrified the man was actually Valentino’s ghost that I fainted.’ When she recovered, the young actress was relieved to see that although the ghost had left the bed sheets and pillow in complete disarray, it had returned to whatever dimension of reality it now called home.”

  The concept of sex between humans and spirits is, in fact, a very ancient one. Works by the Greek philosophers and early Christian fathers refer to men and woman “being visited in the night by supernatural beings”. These phantoms were referred to as an Incubus for the handsome spirit that seduces women and Succubus for the nocturnal beguilers of men. Opinion for a time varied between supposing these spirits were capable of manufacturing a body out of air, to assuming that they stole the body of a dead person. A third school of thought maintained they were the Devil in disguise. Indeed, it is a theme that has intrigued writers and filmmakers for years as exemplified in films such as Blithe Spirit (1945), The Ghost and Mrs Muir with Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney (1947) and the Daryl Hannah/Steve Gutenberg comedy, High Spirits (1988).

  However, a substantial number of medieval writers dismissed such stories as fantasies brought about by sexual repression – pointing out that from most accounts widows and virgins were more frequently troubled by Incubi than married women. Nuns, though, suffered the most of all, for – as one writer put it – “Incubi infest cloisters”.

  The famous Malleus Maleficarum first printed in 1486, which deals with a whole range of supernatural topics, cites almost fifty cases of women who admitted to sexual intercourse with spirits as well as about half that number of men. Two cases will suffice for many similar accounts:

  “There is in the town of Coblenz, a poor man who is bewitched in this way. In the presence of his wife he is in the habit of acting after the manner of men with women and he continues to do this repeatedly; nor have the cries and urgent appeal of his wife any effect in making him desist. And after he has fornicated thus two or three times, he bawls out, ‘We are going to start all over again,’ when actually there is no person visible in sight lying with him . . .”

  “There is in Scotland at Moray Firth a highly born girl of great beauty who refused several noblemen in marriage. When her parents commanded her to know the reason, she said that a marvellously beautiful youth had frequent intercourse with her by night, and sometimes by day, and she had no need of a husband. She did not know whence he came or whither he went . . .”

  The ghost hunter, Dr E J Dingwall, devoted several years of study to this aspect of sex and the supernatural and in 1952 reported two particular cases he had investigated of people being “persecuted” by Incubi and Succubi. One was a young man who complained that phantoms in the shape of beautiful young boys came in through his window and sexually seduced him. Dingwall wrote:

  “He was able for a short while to ward off the attacks by sleeping with his window fast shut. But after a few days the spirits dematerialized themselves outside, passed through the glass in incorporeal form, and rematerialized within. The other case is a woman who, as she lies in bed, see a hand gradually take form in the air above her body, which hand then sexually assaults her.”

  My own files indicate that there have been an increasing number of cases of young girls molested by “supernatural hands” in recent years. I have selected a few typical examples here.

  In May 1970, for instance, the Daily Mirror reported that a friendly ghost who “regularly slaps my wife’s bottom” was haunting the converted stable home of George Meyer in Iver, Buckinghamshire. Another apparition at the Albion Arms Hotel in Bolton, Lancashire, made even more intimate attacks on the landlady, Barbara Barnes, whenever she was taking a bath. She told the Sunday Mirror, “I was just getting into the bath when I felt a hand caressing my bottom. At first I thought it was my husband, but I looked around and there was no one there. Since then the ghost has played tricks in the cellar and even dried up the beer in the pumps one night.”

  Leila Mudd, the former Miss Great Britain, also had trouble with a ghost in her husband’s pub, The Liverpool Arms in Kingston, Surrey. She told the paper, “He’s a kinky Peeping Tom who keeps spying on me when I’m having a bath. Other strange things have happened. He was seen standing beside my teenage daughter’s bed on one occasion and even chased my mother-in-law down the stairs on another.”

  As she was getting ready for bed
, another attractive landlady, Peggy Edwards, at the 200-year-old New Inn at Rosebush, Pembrokeshire in west Wales, found herself being bothered by spirits, she told the News of the World that same year: “Often when I’m undressing I hear the sound of giggling. There must be more than one because I hear the cheeky things calling out and flirting with me as I strip for bed. In the morning I find that my undies have mysteriously been scattered around the room. It’s one thing to have admirers, but supernatural ones!”

  Five years after these reports, two more public houses were being subjected to attacks by pinching ghosts. The apparition at the twelth-century Belper Arms in Newton Burgoland, Leicestershire only targeted females, a staff member, Edith White, told the News of the World in December 1975: “If the girls are young and pretty the ghost always goes for their behinds. If they’re older and more settled, he touches them on the shoulder to make them turn round – presumably to see whether they are worth his further attention.” The same month the Sunday Mirror reported that a ghost who had been nicknamed “George” was pinching the bottoms of barmaids working at the Black Horse at Windsor, Berkshire.

  Phantom fondlers also appeared regularly in the 1980s. In October 1981, the eighteenth-century Blue Bell pub at Warrington in Cheshire was forced to hang a notice in the bar, “Don’t blame the lads, ladies – it’s only our ghost!” according to a report in the Sunday People. It appeared that the ghost had groped three barmaids, the landlady and a number of female customers. The landlady, Lynda Wrench, told the paper, “No one has ever seen the ghost, but a few of us have felt his presence. He just grabs your behind and then pats it. Often the nearest man gets the blame. But it’s happened too often when there was no one else around. We’ve also had a few glasses flying off the shelf – but he’s really a friendly ghost.”

  Suggestions that the “spirits” to be found behind the bars of public houses might be the explanation for such events continued to be put forward when the News of the World ran another typical story in November 1983 that “the ghost of a naughty knight is causing chaos at the Knight’s Lodge Inn on the outskirts of Corby in Northamptonshire”. The apparition was lifting ladies’ skirts, tickling the tops of their legs and pinching their bottoms. The owners had called in psychic investigator Jean Cooksley, who spent several nights on the premises and reported, “I’ve seen him and he’s a big robust chap – a cavalier who carries an ostrich feather with him. He uses the feather to lift the ladies’ skirts and tickle them. He must have been a real Casanova when he was alive.”

  In December 1984, the News of the World sent a pair of ghost hunters, Roy Stockdill and Michael Parker, with medium Shirley Waterman to investigate the “grouping ghoul” of Lee House, a 700-year-old manor house near Barnstaple in Devon. Williams spent a night in the old panelled bedroom, which was said to be the centre of the haunting. She was knocked out of the four-poster bed and told her colleagues, “I was thrown to the floor and felt a ghostly hand groping my legs. I have a strong feeling that this is a very happy room where a lot of love and lust went on.”

  The Sun returned to the theme again in December 1993 with accounts of a scantily-clad female ghost who was making a habit of haunting courting couples in Hertfordshire, whisking away underclothes they had discarded; a nude male spectre wearing women’s undies seen in a Kensington, London flat; and an undressed phantom nicknamed the “Peeping Tom of Pendle” who had been targeting young lovers in Blackburn, Lancashire at a spot once the haunt of witches. Ghost hunter Colin Waters, a forty-seven-old history lecturer from Whitby, North Yorkshire who helped the newspaper compile its report commented: “Sex ranks with fear and love as the strongest emotion. It is no wonder a wide variety of hauntings are sexual.”

  One man who was in no doubt that ghosts have a sex life was American clairvoyant and author, Stanley Wojcik of New Jersey. He believes that spirits engage in lovemaking and some come to the beds of the living as “astral lovers”. Writing in 1981, he claimed:

  “Women who are unattached, unmarried or divorced often attract the amorous activities of male spooks for some unaccountable reason. I have investigated numerous cases where women told me that they had actually felt possessed by ghosts. They said that they felt all the excitement of lovemaking. I also believe spirits are just like human beings. They are the astral counterparts of their former mortal selves. Sex after death is not biological. Spirits do make love, but it is an all-cellular love – a blending of their energies.”

  It is not only single men and women who have been haunted by seductive spirits. There are also a number of stories on record about young couples who have been subjected to ghostly phenomena at some of the most intimate moments of their lives. Consider the story of newlyweds Steve and Debbie Mikloz of Raunds, Northamptonshire reported by the Daily Star in August 1979. They had just moved into a new flat on their wedding night when a day of joy turned into a night of terror:

  “They got into bed, put out the lights . . . and Debbie, 17, suddenly realized they were not alone. Seconds later so did Steve. Someone grabbed him by the throat and dragged him out of bed, gasping for breath. Debbie was pinned to the bed and felt hands all over her body. She screamed and moments later struggled free. The terrified couple grabbed their clothes and fled from the flat. ‘The place was haunted by something evil,’ said Steve. ‘We are never going back.’ ”

  Airline steward Nigel Savage and his girlfriend, Angela Styles, a dancer with the Young Generation group, were also subjected to a number of terrifying attacks by a ghost that tried to take possession of the beautiful young girl’s body, according to Alec Snobel in the account of their lives he wrote for the News of the World in March 1980. The spirit was that of an evil, curly-haired man named Edward Cadagan who had hanged himself over half a century earlier after brutally murdering a young girl. The conviction Angela was being taken over by him emerged after the pair had been together for several years. Her sudden mood swings, terrible rages and attacks on Nigel – including biting him – when they were in bed and of which she had no knowledge afterwards, convinced the pair something was dreadfully wrong. The disturbances climaxed one night in 1980 when the young dancer suddenly shook her partner awake:

  “Angela edged closer to him. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered. ‘I just had the feeling someone walked over my grave.’ Then Nigel felt it, too, an eerie presence in the room, a sense of invisible danger close by. His own heart pounded as the evil atmosphere thickened and then he shouted, ‘Oh, God, Angela – I know it’s him.’ Immediately an appalling scream filled the room, high-pitched and almost choking, like a man being tortured. Angela, shaking uncontrollably, sank her nails deep into Nigel’s arm, drawing blood. But he felt no pain.

  “Seconds later, the screaming was joined by the sound of rushing air, very loud, like someone expelling breath noisily. It seemed to come from Angela’s chest. After several seconds the scream and the noise stopped and the two of them, paralysed with fear, stared into the darkness. Just a couple of feet over their heads hung a huge, black shape. It was so overpoweringly threatening that they felt it was about to destroy them. Desperately, Nigel began saying the Lord’s Prayer out loud. The black shape immediately began to dwindle. By the time he reached “Amen”, the apparition had gone completely. After a moment, Nigel spoke again, ‘Angela, that could only be Edward Cadagan – I’m sure the scream was his and that rush of air was him leaving your body’.”

  After contacting a medium and holding a séance, which satisfied the couple that the ghost was that of Cadagan, they contacted an exorcist to remove the malevolent spirit threatening to dominate the couple’s life together. Alec Snobel was happy to tell his readers that the “possession” of Angela Styles was now over.

  Perhaps the most unusual case of this kind I have heard was told to me by actress Debbie Watling who grew up in Loughton, Essex where I began my career as a journalist in the 1960s. Debbie followed in the footsteps of her actor father, Jack, graduating from child parts to TV drama series including Danger UXB an
d movies including That’ll Be The Day in which she co-starred with David Essex. She told me that she had had her first taste of the supernatural while still a child growing up in the Watling family’s rambling sixteenth-century home, Alderton Hall, in Loughton:

  “I was about eight at the time. I was woken up one night by a face peering intently at me and I felt my hand being held by another hand. I sat up in amazement and saw the figure of a girl slowly dissolving into the wall.”

  Jack Watling was initially sceptical about his daughter’s story. But when he investigated the history of Alderton Hall he learned that a servant girl who had occupied the same room about a hundred years before had been seduced by the squire and then turned out when she gave birth to a child. The hapless girl drowned herself and the baby in a nearby pool – and it was her ghost that was now roaming the premises. Debbie encountered the ghost again – and each time it seemed to become more intimate with her, she said:

  “It was in the middle of the night. I was asleep. Then I suddenly felt a cold hand beneath the bedclothes taking hold of my hand. It gripped me and then tugged and tugged. It seemed to be trying to pull me out of the bed onto the floor. I was frightened to death.”

  On another occasion, Debbie awoke to find her heavy oak bed being moved unaided across the room. As she sat up in horror, books began to spill from the shelves and she briefly saw a pretty face appear on one wall. On yet another occasion she awoke in bed to feel a heavy pressure bearing down on her, but no one in sight. These incidents, though, were nothing to the horror that almost overwhelmed her in 1985: