by Neil Arnold
There is a sinister legend attached to an old tree that was said to have stood in the vicinity of Shurland Hall. Many local teenagers often told the legend to petrified friends on cold, autumnal nights as a warning not to stray too close to the haunted hall. The fable claims that if you manage to locate the correct old tree then within its twisted frame you will find a rusty knife, embedded deep within the bark. Rumour has it that the weapon was put there by a gnarled witch as part of an evil curse; should you remove the blade from the tree than you shall fall under that particular curse. Those who tell the story will state quite matter-of-factly that the reason the witch stabbed the tree was in the hope that it would die, along with all those who inhabited Shurland Hall. Over time this friend-of-a-friend tale has been passed through schools and colleges, including those at Minster, although it seems as if the curse remains engrained in that tree because no one has managed to remove that rusty implement – not that they can find it – probably due to fear rather than the want of trying. Such a legend, however spooky, has echoes of so many other Kent-related myths, such as the Countless Stones at Aylesford, near Blue Bell Hill where it is said that if you manage to count the correct number then you will conjure the Devil! Another similar version relates to the so-called Devil’s Bush in Pluckley, near Ashford, a village thought to be Britain’s most haunted. The legend claims that should anyone be brave (or stupid) enough to visit the bush on a dark and windy night, strip off naked and dance around the scrub a certain amount of times (usually thirteen, for effect), then again, the Devil will appear. However, the ‘knife in the tree legend’ has closer associations with an ancient tree situated in All Saints churchyard, at Loose in Maidstone. Local teenagers will often tell you that if you stick a pin into a certain segment of the tree and take part in a certain ritual – usually by saying a certain line or rhyme of words (they vary depending on the storyteller) – then immediately after you have muttered the lyrics you must run to a certain window of the church (or a specific grave/tomb) in order to catch a quick glimpse of a spectral woman killing a baby. Hideous stuff, but complete myth!
In the summer of 2013 a woman named Christdeena Ellis claimed to have photographed a ghost peering out of one of these windows of the hall.
The Shurland Hotel, which can be located on the High Street in Eastchurch, also has a history of peculiar happenings. In October 2011 Kent Online reported on the ‘haunting moment’ that a ‘phantom glass-flinger’ was caught on camera. Although paranormal activity at the hotel had been witnessed by staff and customers alike for many years, this was the first time any evidence had actually been produced to suggest that a ghost was lurking on the premises. Things took on a rather spooky turn when a pint glass full to the brim with beer was seen to fly from one of the tables and smash on the floor. The landlord, a Mr Haynes, who wasn’t there at the time, was so intrigued by the incident and keen to prove it was a genuine occurrence that he immediately viewed the CCTV camera in the bar to see if it had picked up the flying pint glass. Lo and behold, the camera had picked up the extraordinary incident.
Mr Haynes told the Sheerness Times Guardian, ‘So much stuff happens here. We’ve had banging on the walls and footsteps across the roof but there’s nobody there.’
The Shurland Hotel in the High Street at Eastchurch.
The landlord, who lived in the upstairs flat with his wife Sam, also spoke about the night his wife woke up and saw a little girl standing at the edge of the bed. ‘The girl was about seven or eight,’ he commented, but was the spirit responsible for the touch lamp in the same room flickering on and off? Mr Haynes also commented that a builder who stayed at the hotel for a few weeks had a creepy experience one morning when the bedroom door opened and a face peered in. The man jumped out of bed to investigate but there was nobody to be seen.
Mr Haynes concluded with an encounter involving a male member of bar staff, who was hit by a flying toilet roll at the top of the cellar stairs.
The footage of the alleged flying pint appeared on YouTube, but to many it remains inconclusive. There is no doubt that the glass does slide from the table but sceptics would argue that more evidence is required before suggesting a ghost is responsible. Staff at the Shurland Hotel set up a website to record any unusual happenings, but sadly it hasn’t been updated for a while. Even so, the hotel is over 200 years old and was known up until the 1980s as the Crooked Billet.
The Castle pub sits close by the Shurland Hotel. In his book Haunted Inns of Kent, Roger Long also mentions a phantom coach and horses said to glide ‘ergo between the Shurland and the Castle’ although he doubts the more recent report from a man who claimed to have seen the spectral coach on the grounds that the witness was ‘leaving the Shurland and heading for the Castle’, suggesting that maybe the manifestation had been the product of too much alcohol!
The Shurland Hotel – the haunt of a ghost that likes to move pint glasses.
The stretch of road between the Shurland Hotel and The Castle pub is believed to be haunted by a phantom coach and horses.
A Coach and Horses and More …
A phantom carriage pulled by a spectral horse or two seems popular in folklore. One such vehicle is briefly mentioned in Peter Underwood’s book Ghosts of Kent. He comments on Parsonage Farm at Eastchurch as being haunted over the years by ‘… a contraption, trotting silently by the graveyard, usually at dusk’. No one appears to know why this spectre visits the area and according to Mr Underwood, ‘No one knows where it comes from or where it goes’, making this spooky tale rather vague to say the least. What I’ve often been intrigued about regarding reputed ghostly coach and horses is the fact that we never seem to get a sighting of just the coachman floating in mid-air on his own. Surely not every coachman perished alongside his carriage, and even if he did so, surely his vehicle would not have a soul?
It’s no surprise that one of Sheppey’s oldest houses has a ghost story attached to it. Parsonage Farm was once owned by Cyril Poster, a former headmaster of Sheppey School. He resided at the 600-year-old house with his wife Doreen and they were said to have been accompanied by a ghost. A woman in grey supposedly loitered in the vicinity of the top landing of the house ‘spiriting her way through the powder closets or disappearing in an ethereal breeze’.
Many old houses situated on Sheppey’s sprawling marshes are said to be haunted.
Mrs Poster was far from being afraid of the lady in grey, commenting, ‘She’s very welcome – if she exists – and there is more than enough room for her.’
The large house has always been steeped in history and its rural setting makes it an ideal setting for tales of ghosts. According to an old Sheerness Times and Guardian report from the mid-1970s, ‘David (12), the youngest of a talented family, has commandeered the old storeroom backing the laundry, as his “special room” – from here he has access to the top floor, by way of one of the three stair-cases and his imagination runs riot, in conversations with the “Grey Lady” before he escapes into the old priest-hole.’
According to records Parsonage Farm is believed to be a lot older than initially thought, with mention of it in History of the Isle of Sheppey as being in existence from AD 1130. At that time it was home to several priests.
7
HAUNTED HARTY
When Sheppey was often referred to as the Isles of Sheppey, Harty was very much a separate entity. Its name said to derive from the Saxon word heord-tu, meaning an island filled with herds of cattle. It has long been claimed that the name Harty comes from Old English and is loosely based on a term meaning ‘the marsh of monsters’. Perhaps this is unsurprising when we consider other derivatives, such as the name Heorot in the classic poem Beowulf. Heorot is the name of the great hall allegedly plagued by a man-eating monster in the ancient English poem. Historian Edward Hasted confirms my suspicions of the Saxon origination, stating that ‘It is called in antient [sic] records Harteigh’, deriving from the original heord-tu. The isle has also been recorded as Hertei from 1086 and in 1601
became Harty. It seems unlikely, however, that Harty was once used as the setting for the tale of Beowulf, with experts arguing that it more likely originated from the soggy marshes of East Anglia.
The Ferry House Inn sits at the end of the 3-mile-long Harty Ferry Road. A remote location, even for a ghost!
Harty is often referred to as Harty Ferry – due to the boat which used to take passengers across to the island from Oare, situated on the other side of the river. The Sheppey Website mentions how the local priest, who lived in the mainland, would use the ferry to reach the island but often due to bad weather, such as thick fog, would find himself stranded in the Swale.
Phantoms of the Ferry House Inn
A few years ago now, a paranormal investigative team visited the Ferry House Inn. This old pub sits in one of the most remote locations for any inn, on the Harty Ferry Road. Amidst the marshes, the pub is a haven for birdwatchers who can enjoy a nice drink and then look out across the landscape for unusual wildlife. The pub itself is said to date back to the sixteenth century. The warden of the ferry used to live in the house before it became a pub.
When the ghost-hunting team investigated the pub, they claimed to have taken a photograph showing the figure of a spectral man sitting at a table, accompanied by a peculiar flash of light. The researchers were of the opinion that maybe the spectre had been that of a man named Coleman who in 1854 drowned when his boat capsized in the Swale. The man was said to have lived in one of the cottages once situated where the pub now sits. The investigation, which was conducted in 2004, also revealed a strange series of banging noises in the cellar of the pub, whilst interviewed staff claimed that they’d had feelings in the past of being watched by an unseen presence. Sadly nothing substantial came to fruition.
In August of 2013 I contacted the manager of the pub, a lady named Victoria McCabe. I asked her whether any of the ghostly tales connected to the inn were true and she replied:
There are indeed many rumours I am sure, however none of them particularly concrete. We had a psychic evening in January which picked up on a lot of spirits including those trapped here when there was a fire many centuries ago. I also understand that the owner was told by someone twelve years ago when he bought the pub never to open up the underground blocked in cellar for that sort of reason.
I guess only time will tell if anyone is brave enough to open up that sealed room but what spirits and manifestations of the night will come forth should it be opened is anyone’s guess.
The thirteenth-century church of St Thomas, which can be found at Harty, is also rumoured to have a ghost. Many years ago there were sporadic sightings of shadowy figures loitering about the grounds which led some researchers to believe that such entities were in fact ghosts of those seamen who had drowned in the Swale and were then buried in unmarked graves.
The Ferry House Inn.
The thirteenth-century church of St Thomas at Harty.
Such is the remote location of Harty I’m actually quite surprised that anyone has reported seeing such ghouls, especially when one considers that records from the nineteenth century speak of the local inhabitants as having to travel a couple of miles on pony and trap to reach the nearest town. Even so, some of the most isolated spots on this planet are also some of the most haunted, or so it would seem.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip to the Isle of Sheppey in search of its reputed spooks and spectres. I think it’s only fair that I leave you with the words of Sheila M. Judge, who put so much work into highlighting the strange history of the island:
Sheppey, the wild Island, with laws and beliefs entirely its own, passes rapidly into the pages of history. The strange local tales that were once passed on down through the generations, may soon be heard no more.
Shurland Hall from an old postcard. (Author’s own collection)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold, Neil, Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Kent (CFZ Press, 2009)
Daley, Augustus, A History of the Isle of Sheppey (Arthur J. Cassell, 1904)
Dolan, Mia, Haunted Homes (Harper Collins, 2006)
Eason, Cassandra, Ghost Encounters: Finding Phantoms and Understanding Them (Blandford, 1997)
Forman, John, Islanders (Compiled by Arts & Libraries Pub., 1996)
Harper, C.G., The Ingoldsby Country: Literary Landmarks of the Ingoldsby Legends (Adam & Charles Black, 1906)
Igglesden, Charles, A Saunter through Kent with Pen and Pencil (Kentish Express)
Judge, Sheila M., The Isle of Sheppey (Roadmaster Books, 1997)
Judge, Sheila M., Strange Tales of Old Sheppey (Tames, 2003)
Long, Roger, Haunted Inns of Kent (SB Publications, 2005)
Paine, Brian (ed.), Unexplained Kent (Breedon Books, 1997)
Rymill, John A., The Three Sheppey Islands: In the 19th and 20th Centuries (Green Arrow, 2006)
Underwood, Peter, Ghosts of Kent (Meresborough Books, 1985)
Various, Around and About the Isle of Sheppey (Freedom Centre Publishing, 1995)
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COPYRIGHT
First published in 2014
The History Press
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This ebook edition first published in 2014
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© Neil Arnold, 2014
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