After contacting the Society, I received an email from one of its former Presidents, Professor Donald James West, who invited me to speak to him, before adding the proof of sanity that is obligatory in these cases: ‘P.S. I am a professor of criminology and a psychiatrist’. Not that Professor West is at all boastful. In fact, the first thing he said when we met in his basement flat in Kensington (which is filled with good art and has perhaps a certain dark heaviness about it that might attest to his interests) was, ‘I’m just a run of the mill academic.’
This may well not be true: he was a Professor of Clinical Criminology at Cambridge, and has written eleven books on the subject. But Professor West is comparing himself with the Olympian founders of the Society. These were three ‘Trinity men’ – that is, they were all sometime fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge: Henry Sidgwick, who tutored Arthur Balfour in moral philosophy at Cambridge; Frederic Myers, classical scholar, poet and originator of the terms ‘telepathy’ and ‘sixth sense’; and Edmund Gurney, musician and psychologist. Other early Presidents included the above-mentioned Arthur Balfour, Lodge and Crookes; also Gilbert Murray (Regius Professor of Greek, and founder of the League of Nations Union after the First World War), William McDougall (Professor of Psychology at Harvard), F.J.M Stratton (Professor of Astrophysics at Cambridge), Guy William Lambert, sometime Assistant Under-Secretary of State for War. And Freud and Jung were corresponding members.
There is a slight falling off towards the modern day. The academic institutions, and positions held, are not so august, but if you fill in the on-line membership application form, the first options given under ‘title’ are still ‘Dr’ and ‘Prof’.
At first, the Society engaged with spiritualism, and studied the accounts of the investigation of D.D. Home by Crookes, which had occurred before its foundation. It also monitored its own, trusted mediums, and exposed obviously fraudulent ones. But the first landmark was the publication, in 1886, of a two-volume study called Phantasms of The Living, which is commonly cited as the classic of psychical research. It was mainly written by Edmund Gurney, was overseen intellectually by Frederic Myers and was based on research conducted by a man called Frank Podmore. There will be more on this truly haunting book later, but for now I will mention that it was concerned with what were regarded as telepathically generated ‘crisis apparitions’ or ‘death wraiths’, such as the kind seen by my grandmother: visions of people who were at the time dying, usually many miles away from the seer of the vision or, in the jargon, ‘the percipient’.
After the First World War, the emphasis shifted to the study of phenomena not necessarily connected to death: telepathy between people in perfectly good health; clairvoyance; retrocognition (visions of the past); precognition (visions of the future); false memory syndrome; and parapsychology in general. The actual ghost-trail had gone cold, and the eclipse of spiritualism and a series of internal disputes accounted for a steep drop in membership during the inter-war years.
The Society still sent out its ‘investigators’ – bright young men from the Universities – to the scenes of sightings, but now apparently rather tardily. In 1931 a chimney sweep called Mr Bull, of Ramsbury in Wiltshire, had died of cancer. He reappeared in his house, and was seen many times by various members of his family and their friends, since he would linger for hours on end. The family called in the vicar, who in turn wrote to the SPR asking them to come and investigate, and urging them to hurry up, since the Bulls would soon be moving into a council flat. The SPR replied with a questionnaire. The vicar filled it out and returned it, whereupon – well, after five more days – the SPR sent two investigators: Gerald Balfour, brother of Arthur, and a barrister called J.D. Piddington. When they arrived in Ramsbury, the pair found the family in the process of moving, and Mr Bull did not subsequently reappear, either in the house or the new flat.
People still ask the Society to investigate phenomena, but, Professor West told me while serving coffee and dark chocolate biscuits in his flat, ‘not as much as before’.
Professor West’s own psychic researches began when he was a student at Liverpool University. He was particularly interested in the work of J.B. Rhine, the American parapsychology pioneer and, taking his cue from Rhine, he ‘tried to produce Extra-Sensory Perception effects under controlled conditions’. It was done by post: a matter of finding out whether people could tell what time was shown on clock cards held by Professor West. He had a dozen ‘subjects’. ‘Did it work?’ I ask, and Professor West smiles ruefully, ‘I had some interesting results with a retired engineer.’ But the matter couldn’t be pushed to a definitive conclusion.
Professor West’s whole demeanour is wry, gently melancholic, and this I suspect of the tone of the current-day SPR as a whole. Membership is holding steady, but, at nine hundred, well down on the peak of fifteen hundred. In spite of the shift towards parapsychology, proof of survival of death remains the Holy Grail for Society members. ‘But it’s almost inconceivable,’ says Professor West sipping his coffee, ‘…almost.’
Has he ever seen a ghost, I wonder?
‘No,’ he says, smiling, half apologetic.
After speaking to Professor West, I cycled the short distance from his flat to the headquarters of the SPR.
These are located above ‘J.H. Kenyon Limited, Funeral Directors’, and if that weren’t Ealing Comedy-ish enough, it is not quite clear which bell push belongs to which concern. (This must be doubly annoying, since it’s the business of each to put the other out of business). But I guess right, and I am admitted to the SPR rooms, the biggest of which is a library. Here, the orderly shelves, the sedate potted palms, the gentility of the two members superintending contrasts with the extravagance of the book titles: Borderland of Psychical Research, Almanac of the Uncanny, Heavenly Lights, The Other Side of Death, Ecstasy, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. On the top of one bookcase is something resembling an old-fashioned radio. The librarian tells me that nobody knows what this relic of the heroic days is, but that it is thought to be ‘a machine for testing mediums’. There is a switch marked ‘sensitivity’, graded from 1/50, via 1/20 and ¾ to ‘FULL’. Another switch gives two options: ‘Galvo Lamp On’ and ‘Galvo Lamp Off ’. Accessories in the form of two very sharp pencils and a test tube with a stopper are clipped into place on the front of the contraption.
One is always looking for some psychic event to occur in conjunction with the SPR and, sitting down in the library in order to flip through the membership directory, I see the name and address of a man who lives two doors away from me.
As I leave with a couple of books under my arm, I reflect that the strangeness of the library comes from the fact that it represents an attempt to codify the numinous. And this prompts the thought that the many libraries in ghost stories are depicted as places where the supernatural and the rational clash. As such they are dangerous, combustible places…
GHOSTS AND LIBRARIES
The ghost story character quietly reading in his library is asking for trouble. The library represents everything the ghost is against: tranquillity, normality, sceptimistm, the pursuit of the rational, and so libraries are the most important rooms in ghost stories.
In Edith Wharton’s ghost story, ‘Afterward’ (1910), the library is the ‘pivotal’ feature of the Tudor house called Lyng in Dorsetshire that the American couple are so keen to occupy, even though they have been warned it is haunted. For this Anglophile pair, Mary and Ned Boyne, the ghost is part of the attraction, along with the remoteness, the lack of electric light, hot water-pipes and ‘other vulgar necessities’. They move into the house, and Ned Boyne begins work, in the library, on his book with the title – highly provocative to any spirit – The Economic Basis of Culture. It is while ‘waiting in the library for the lamps to come’ that Mary Boyle has her first misgivings about the house: ‘The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of velvet shadow dropping f
rom the low ceiling, the rows of books, the smoke-blurred sculpture of the hearth.’ And it is in the library that her husband will encounter the ghost.
The M.R. James stories feature so many academics wrongly assuming they are safe in libraries that it would be tiresome to count them. ‘The Tractate Middoth’ stands out as a ghost story almost entirely set in a library. Towards the end of an autumn afternoon, a thin-faced man with grey ‘Piccadilly weepers’ (mutton-chop whiskers) enters the library vestibule and presents to the library assistant a slip on which is written the book he wants to see. The assistant, a Mr Garrett (he’s working class, of course, with a name like that) looks up the book in the index, and observes: ‘Talmud: Tractate Middoth, with the commentary of Nachmanides, Amsterdam, 1707. 11.3.34. Hebrew class, of course. Not a very difficult job this.’
He’s wrong about that, actually. It seems this is a popular title, and when Mr Garrett goes to find the book, he sees it being taken off the shelf by ‘a shortish old gentleman, perhaps a clergyman, in a cloak’, but then again the light in the library is poor at that time of day…
Libraries – or at least rooms in which people read – also occur commonly in true ghost stories.
In 1939 a book was published called Apparitions and Haunted Houses. It was compiled by Sir Ernest Bennett, a man described slightly disturbingly on the first page as ‘Late Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford’. The book is a compendium of very plausible ghost sightings, beautifully written, and sent in by middle class percipients. The tone is melancholic and genteel. An extra man is observed by a several guests at a ‘tea and music’ house party. He looked a ‘legal type’, and was observed to do nothing more alarming than sit on the sofa reading newspapers. But who was he? Four guests asked the hostess, who absolutely denied that he had been present.
Many entries include lines like, ‘After I had spent the afternoon, writing letters and reading…’ ‘I looked up from my book….’ ‘I returned to my reading…’ ‘I was smoking a cigarette and reading…’ There is the customary praise for the ‘intellectual quality’ and ‘soundness of mind’ of the percipients, and their bookishness seems to back this up. It struck me, reading this book, that people are much more likely to see ghosts when they are alone, still, quiet, and in the semi-dream state that reading or writing can bring on. This is why ghosts and libraries go together, and why fewer ghosts are seen today.
*
It is in the context of libraries that I want to grapple with the burly, garrulous figure of Harry Price. Price styled himself ‘a psychic detective’ and he became famous for investigating, in the 1930’s, what he called The Most Haunted House in England, namely Borley Rectory in Essex. The phrase was not, apparently his own. It had been suggested to him by a tourist, because Borley was the talk of Britain in the late Twenties and early Thirties. But the phrase served Price’s gift for publicity, and provided the title for the first of his two books on Borley Rectory.
Price was a psychic researcher who sought intellectual respectability for the pursuit – and fame for himself. He was also, rather awkwardly as far as that first aim was concerned, a magician, a fact he does not mention in ‘The Most Haunted House in England’, which appeared in 1940.
The story of Borley Rectory was told me by my father when I was a young boy. I was fascinated by the baleful name of the place, and would ask him to repeat the stories, even though I knew they would keep me awake. Borley was the haunting of my father’s formative years, and he had read about as a boy, when had had taken Price’s book out of York Library. In brief, the story is as follows…
Borley Rectory was built in 1863 in order to accommodate the Reverend H.D.E Bull. It looked like a cluster of Gothic churches, and is always described as horribly ugly in the many books that have been written about it. It had, of course, a library, to which we will return.
Right from the start, the Reverend Mr Bull and his family reported ghosts – spirits of the old school, you might say: a nun walking in the gardens, a spectral coach and horses, and they weren’t too bothered by them. The Reverend Mr Bull died in 1892 and his son, Harry Bull, also a reverend, took over the property with his own family. Further sightings were reported by the family, again in casual terms. I like the sound of Harry Bull. He said that he intended to return to haunt the house himself, and that he would develop a signature style of haunting ‘such as throwing moth-balls about, that’s it. Moth-balls, then you’ll know it’s me.’ But one should never give such a hostage to fortune in the world of ghostliness, and after his death in 1927, moth-balls were reported as flying about the house, along with a good deal else.
The next tenants, the Reverend Mr and Mrs Eric Smith, reported poltergeist activity. Poltergeist is from the German, combining ‘poltern’ – to rattle – with ‘geist’ – meaning spirit, and we will hear more from them in Part Three. The Smiths reported stones thrown at windows, elusive footsteps, tappings and rappings, and Harry Price came to investigate in 1929. He held a séance in the garden, in which he said he’d contacted the Reverend Harry Bull.
Then the Reverend L.A. Foyster and his wife Marianne took over the place, and during their five-year tenancy the poltergeist activity became more violent. For example, Mrs Foyster reported being nearly smothered by her own mattress. Mrs Foyster was, perhaps, emotionally disturbed. She disliked Borley Rectory; she was much younger than her husband, and she was carrying on an affair with the lodger in the house. Sceptics would say she invented phenomena out of hysteria. Believers would say that poltergeists derive their energy from highly charged emotional states.
The Foysters summoned Price back to the house, so he packed his ‘ghost-hunter’s kit’ including ‘portable telephone for communicating with an assistant in another part of building or garden’, ‘note book’, ‘red, blue and black pencils’, ‘bowl of mercury for detecting tremors in a room’, ‘soft felt overshoes used for creeping, unheard about the house in order that neither human beings nor paranormal “entities” shall be disturbed when producing “phenomena”’, and ‘flask of brandy in case member of investigating staff or resident is injured or faints.’
The felt shoes and the brandy, I feel, are telling. Price inhabited an Agatha Christie world of slightly rackety gentility: of personal secretaries, cigarette cases, wainscoted rooms, vicars, retired Majors. A characteristic sentence from his book would be: ‘I was sitting in my office in Kensington when two ladies were announced’. He tends to give, and receive, accounts of ghosts over lunch. One séance that he attended, related to the Borley goings-on, was held, somehow inevitably, in Streatham.
Resuming his investigations at Borley, Price noted sibilant whisperings, writings in pencil on the wall, asking Marianne for ‘mass’ and ‘candles’. These, Price assumed, were from the tormented spirit of the nun, apparently a refugee from a convent that had once existed nearby. She had had an affair with a monk from a monastery that had also been nearby. Price became very keen on this nun, and would later unearth what he claimed were her bones during an excavation of the basement of Borley, rather as Mrs Crippen’s remains had been found in an excavation of Dr Crippen’s basement.
Price wrote about Borley for the Daily Mirror, and soon regular coach excursions were coming from Chelmsford, Colchester and Bury St Edmunds to Borley – ‘to see the ghost’. In 1937, after the Foysters had left Borley, Price took a year’s lease on the place and moved in. On May 25th 1937, he placed an advert in the Times appealing for impartial observers: ‘HAUNTED HOUSE. Responsible persons of leisure and intelligence, intrepid, critical, and unbiased, are invited to join rota of observers in a year’s night and day investigation of alleged haunted house in Home Counties.’
This is a perfect encapsulation of the ghost-hunter’s pursuit of intellectual respectability. Note, for instance, that Price did not advertise in the Daily Mirror, which had paid him very well to write about Borley.
Price described the response to his advertisement as ‘phenomenal’. Having eliminated the ‘cranks’ he recruited �
�some forty gentlemen and one or two ladies’ of ‘the right sort: ’varsity graduates, scientists, doctors of medicine, consulting engineers, army men on the active list, and so on…’, and he has the magician’s habit of stressing that he didn’t know any of them personally. Price and a ‘young Oxford friend’ who prepared the house for the vigils decided to accommodate the observers in, guess where, the library. This would be the ‘base room’. This was supposedly for practical reasons: the room was convenient for the hall, where many strange things had occurred, and directly beneath the ‘blue room’, in which both the Reverend Mr Bulls had died, and in which many strange things had also occurred. Its French windows gave easy access to the garden, which the ghostly nun patrolled. The room was also ‘comfortable’ and equipped with ‘a large number of shelves which were permanently fixed to the walls’.
Well, it would do if it was a library. There weren’t any books left on those shelves, but my suspicion would be that the library appealed to Price as a base of operations because it symbolised intellectualism, or at least rationality and objectivity.
He had built up his own library in Kensington, part of a set-up he called ‘The National Laboratory of Psychical Research’. He wanted to merge this with the SPR library to create a sort of university of psychic research, but he kept having political disputes with the SPR. (He eventually left his collection of ghost books to London University who are now, I believe, looking to offload it).
Price can be seen speaking from his library in YouTube footage – boasting of his rare and ancient volumes, and speaking of his scientific methods. He looks a burly man, walking with a slight lurch and speaking with a slight slur – and a hint of a cockney accent – while smoking in a self-conscious fashion. Watching him, I wondered whether he was pissed. His double-breasted suit seemed…well, not loud exactly but fast. If he had been in an Agatha Christie novel, would Price have been the murderer? I prefer to think not. In ‘Science and Parascience’, Brian Inglis dryly observes that Price was ‘not above assisting the production of physical phenomena with the help of physical force’, and Inglis is not the only one to have thought so. But that’s not to say that Price didn’t come to believe, having gone to Borley as a sceptic – which is what he himself said occurred. Perhaps he was like the staff of the house rented by the narrator in Dickens’s story, ‘The Haunted House’, Ikey and the Odd Girl: ‘Let me do Ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity. The Odd Girl’s case was exactly similar. She went about the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds we heard.’
Ghoul Brittania Page 6