A Ghostly Almanac of Devon and Cornwall E-Book

Nicola Sly

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 181

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

A Ghostly Almanac of Devon & Cornwall is a month-by-month catalogue of reported spectral sightings and paranormal phenomena from around the South West of England. Contained within the pages of this book are strange tales of restless spirits appearing in streets, buildings and churchyards across the region, including a haunted German U-Boat wrecked off Padstow during the First World War; the 'Grey Lady' at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, so-named because of her grey nurse's uniform; the ghost of a Dartmoor Prison inmate seen herding sheep in the prison grounds and out on the moor itself; a shade with a penchant for horror films at Plymouth's Reel Cinema; and the infamous 'Hairy Hands of Dartmoor', which forces drivers off the road. Richly illustrated with 100 photographs and postcards, this chilling collection of stories will appeal to everyone with an interest in the West Country's haunted heritage, and is guaranteed to make your blood run cold.

Leseprobe

A GHOSTLY ALMANAC OF

DEVON &

CORNWALL

A GHOSTLY ALMANAC OF

DEVON &

CORNWALL

NICOLA SLY

First published 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Nicola Sly, 2009, 2013

The right of Nicola Sly to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 5265 1

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Also by the Author

Introduction

1. January

2. February

3. March

4. April

5. May

6. June

7. July

8. August

9. September

10. October

11. November

12. December

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As always, there are numerous people to be thanked for their assistance, especially those people who were prepared to share their stories and who gave their permission for me to include them in this book. Many of them asked to remain anonymous and, throughout the book, these people have been allocated pseudonyms. Readers are respectfully reminded that many of the places described in the book are private residences and are asked to observe the privacy of the owners and current occupiers.

I must thank Melanie Crawford, whose skilful drawings brought some of the featured ghosts to life, and Kim Van der Kiste for supplying the photograph of Bodmin Gaol. I must also thank Matilda Richards, my editor at The History Press, not least for the many sleepless nights that I have spent in the company of the ghosts of Cornwall and Devon while compiling this book. My husband, Richard, was, as always, a great help in proof reading each chapter. A confirmed sceptic on all things paranormal, even he struggled to find a rational explanation for some of the phenomena detailed within the following pages.

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Bristol Murders

Cornish Murders (with John Van der Kiste)

Dorset Murders

Hampshire Murders

Murder by Poison

Shropshire Murders

Somerset Murders (with John Van der Kiste)

West Country Murders (with John Van der Kiste)

Wiltshire Murders

Worcestershire Murders

INTRODUCTION

In the past, I have written several factual books on historical murders and it was at a meeting with my editor about one such book that the conversation turned to the subject of ghosts. Given that I spend so much of my time researching and writing about sudden, violent deaths, I was asked whether or not I believed in the existence of ghosts and my reply was that I had a completely open mind on the subject – I neither believed nor disbelieved, even though I once lived in a house said to be haunted and had seen and heard several things that seemed to defy rational explanation. Then, while researching for another book, I came across an intriguing photograph. In August 1908, Mrs Luard was brutally murdered on the veranda of her summerhouse in Sevenoaks, Kent. Although her husband was a strong suspect, he later committed suicide and the murder remains unsolved to this day. Look at the photograph of the scene of the murder – is the ghostly figure on the centre of the balcony simply a trick of the light or a manifestation of the victim from beyond the grave?

The scene of the Luard murder, Sevenoaks, 1908. (Author’s collection)

It was agreed that I would look objectively at some of the reputedly haunted sites of Devon and Cornwall with the purpose of trying to substantiate some of the accounts and compiling a collection of ‘true’ ghost stories from the region.

In the course of my research for this book, I have found many reports that can immediately be discounted as either false or grossly exaggerated. For example, I found a public building in Devon that was supposedly haunted by the ghost of a little girl who had died there many years earlier as a result of a tragic fire. By looking back to the contemporary newspaper reports of the incident, I discovered that the only victims had been three chickens. Conversely, a fire at a theatre in Exeter in 1887, in which more than 100 people tragically lost their lives, seems to have produced no verifiable cases of ghosts or haunting.

Numerous pubs and hotels throughout the region claim to be haunted, usually by the ghost of a historical murder victim. However compelling these accounts seem to be at first glance, I did not include them unless I could verify that a murder had actually taken place. The one exception to this rule was the notorious Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor, where the reports of ghosts are so consistent and well documented over the years that I felt that it merited inclusion.

However sceptical I might have been when I began writing this book, many of the reported sightings of ghosts in Devon and Cornwall seemed to be supported by the examination of historical records, including contemporary newspapers and censuses. I can also say with absolute honesty that every single person who was prepared to allow me to recount their personal experiences was unshakeable in his or her belief that they had witnessed at first-hand some form of paranormal activity.

I made a deliberate point of avoiding reading any books on the subject of ghosts before I had completed my research, which was thus mainly drawn from historical newspaper accounts. These are listed in more detail in the bibliography at the end of the book.

Now, more than a year after the subject of ghosts was initially raised in casual conversation, having spoken to many people about their experiences, my own attitude to ghosts has changed somewhat and I find myself more convinced about the existence of a ‘life’ beyond the grave. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions . . .

Nicola Sly, 2009

JANUARY

North Devon District Hospital, Barnstaple, Devon

Given that many people will have died in hospitals over the years, the odd tale of ghostly activities in these institutions is perhaps not altogether surprising.

Jackie was admitted to the North Devon District Hospital early in 1996 with a very high temperature. She was immediately placed in isolation in a private room. Jackie freely admits to being delirious and to having hallucinations at the height of her fever, the most vivid of which being that there was a young boy standing pressed against the wall in the corner of the room. Even years later, she vividly remembers him as being about five or six years old, with a sad, flushed face and dark, wavy hair. He was wearing striped pyjamas and looked absolutely terrified at the activity that was taking place around Jackie’s bed, as the nurses battled to bring down her temperature. Ill though she was, Jackie recalls feeling that it was most important to reassure the frightened little boy and remembers trying to persuade the nurses looking after her to comfort him.

It would be all too easy to dismiss Jackie’s experiences as the product of her illness – except for two strange occurrences.

When Jackie’s fever had dropped, the nurses caring for her asked if she could remember her ‘hallucination’, which she still found upsetting several days later. Having described the little boy she had seen in the room, she was shocked when one of the nurses told her that a child exactly matching her description of the little boy had died there just a few weeks earlier.

Then, some years later, Jackie was at a dinner party in her home village in North Devon when the conversation turned to ghosts. To Jackie’s surprise, one of the guests began to relate a story of being in a private room at the North Devon District Hospital and of waking from a nap to find a small boy, dressed in striped pyjamas, standing in her room ‘looking lost’. When she spoke to him, the little boy immediately faded away and she had assumed that she had simply dreamed the encounter.

Jackie and her fellow dinner guest were quickly able to establish that both of them had been in the same private room at the hospital within three weeks of each other during January 1996 and that both had apparently seen the same little boy in exactly the same place.

Braddon Down, Near Lostwithiel, Cornwall

On 19 January 1643, Braddon Down near Lostwithiel was the site of a battle in the English Civil War. Royalist forces, commanded by Sir Ralph Horton, had spent the previous night camped at Boconnoc. As they were decamping, they discovered a contingent of Parliamentarian cavaliers preparing to challenge them.

In a battle that lasted for approximately two hours, the Royalists managed to defeat the Parliamentarian contingent without too much difficulty, effectively placing the county of Cornwall back under Royalist control.

The anniversary of the battle is said to be marked each year by the thunder of phantom hoof beats.

Brixham, Devon

On 9 January 1975, actor John Slater died in the National Heart Hospital after a long illness.

Although he appeared in many films, television programmes and stage plays throughout his career, Slater was perhaps best remembered for his role in the longrunning television programme Z Cars, in which he played the character Detective Sergeant Stone. John and his wife, Betty, had a home in Brixham for many years and, while living in the town, they took an active interest in the theatre there. Slater was even credited with personally saving the theatre when it was threatened with closure by taking out a lease on the building.

Slater is reputed to haunt both the theatre and also the rehearsal rooms of the Brixham Operatic and Dramatic Society at Cavern Hill. Since his death, there have been numerous sightings of Slater in costume at the theatre, along with reports of unexplained malfunctions of equipment, including the stage curtains. On occasions, a performance has been cancelled because the curtains refused to open, only for them to inexplicably be in perfect working order again as soon as the cancellation was announced.

Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Exeter, Devon

In 1741, Dr Alured Clarke was appointed Dean of Exeter and immediately set about providing the city with a new, modern hospital. He approached local landowner John Tuckfield and managed to secure the donation of a large piece of land in Southernhay, which had previously been used for holding fairs and horse shows. Once he had the site for his new hospital, Dean Clarke commissioned architect John Richards to design the building.

On 1 January 1743, Mary Coote and John Elliot became the first outpatients to be treated at the new hospital, with the first in-patients being admitted just days later. The hospital was awarded royal status after a visit from the Duke and Duchess of York in 1899.

Brixham. (Author’s collection)

John Slater, 1970s. (Author’s collection)

A ward at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, 1950s. (Author’s collection)

The Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, c. 1910. (Author’s collection)

An Exeter nurse. (Author’s collection)

However, by 1974, the old building had become woefully inadequate for supplying the medical needs of a large city and its surrounding areas and a new hospital was built in nearby Wonford. When the doctors and nurses finally moved out of the old hospital, they left behind the ‘Grey Lady’.

So named because of her grey nurse’s uniform, thought to date back to the eighteenth century, the Grey Lady frequently appeared on a corridor where the matron’s sleeping quarters were located. She was usually seen running along the corridor, often inexplicably vanishing into thin air.

In researching this book, I spoke to a former patient at the hospital who, in the 1960s, was recovering from an operation and had unexpectedly developed a high temperature. She vividly recalls an ‘old-fashioned’ nurse, dressed in a grey uniform, leaning over her bed one night and placing a welcoming cool hand on her forehead.

At the time, her experience was dismissed as delirium due to her raised temperature. Yet, to the patient, the experience was very real indeed and her description of the nurse clearly describes a woman in eighteenth-century uniform – did she meet the famous Grey Lady?

Penzance, Cornwall

On 8 February 2001, the Western Morning News included a letter from a gentleman named Paul from Redruth.

Paul related his experiences during a late-night visit made to the cemetery in Penzance, which he made with a friend in January 2001. Although their visit to the cemetery ‘started as a joke’, what Paul and his friend both saw left them petrified.

Both men saw a strange white shape, like a person, floating over the ground in the cemetery. The apparition stayed in view for about a minute then disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

In his letter to the newspaper, Paul says that he and his friend were completely sober at the time and that neither of them believed in ghosts. Describing his sighting as ‘quite unbelievable’ he writes that he is aware of reports of other local people having seen ‘something’ at the cemetery.

Indeed, Paul’s experience seems to be the latest in a long line of sightings of the apparition at the cemetery, which lies in an area dubbed ‘The Penzance Triangle’. According to the results of a survey published in 2005, conducted by ghost researcher Lionel Fanthorpe, the 226-square-mile area of Cornwall between Land’s End, St Ives and the Helford Estuary is among the most paranormally active areas of Britain.

Warleggan, Cornwall

The rectory adjacent to the church at Warleggan was a large, sprawling house set in about three-and-a-half acres of grounds, which were filled with beech trees and mature rhododendron bushes. In 1931 it was occupied by the Revd Frederick W. Densham, the new vicar.

Densham was not a local man and from the moment he took up his position in the parish, he and the villagers did not get on. One of his first acts was to purchase a litter of puppies, the largest of which he named Gandhi. As the puppies grew into dogs, they were allowed to roam free and took to hunting the surrounding moors in a pack. Several sheep were maimed and killed by Densham’s dogs and, as a result, many of the local farmers stopped attending the church, while others demanded that the dogs should be destroyed. Eventually a compromise was reached and it was agreed that the rectory should be securely fenced to keep the animals confined. It was a mammoth project, but within a few months the rectory was sheltered behind an 8ft tall barbed-wire fence.

Densham’s alienation of his congregation continued. At meetings of the Parochial Church Council he proposed several radical ideas, which were invariably greeted with stunned silence and suspicion by the villagers. His authoritarian insistence that his motions for improvement were carried caused further ill feeling amongst his parishioners.

Gradually the congregation in the tiny church dwindled to only a very few stalwarts, at which time Densham decided to paint the interior of the church in bold reds, yellows and blues. He did not consult his parishioners first; no doubt wanting to give them what he imagined would be a lovely surprise. The horror of the villagers when they saw their beautiful church so desecrated probably came as a surprise to Densham – but not a pleasant one. The remnants of the congregation voted on his interior design ideas with their feet and Densham found himself left with an empty church, week after week.

Matters came to a head in 1933, when the villagers complained to Dr Walter Frere, the Bishop of Truro, begging him to remove Densham from the parish. Frere suggested a meeting between the parishioners and Densham and, for once, Densham stood before a full church.

The villagers had five main complaints about their vicar to put to the bishop: he had stopped holding Sunday school, he refused to hold services at convenient times, he had threatened to sell the church organ, had converted church property for his own personal use, and had erected a barbed-wire fence around the rectory. The church secretary had another more personal grievance – he told the bishop that Densham had written to him threatening to kill him, after he had tried to prevent the priest tearing up the church.

The bishop assured the villagers that Densham had fulfilled his duties of office and therefore could not legitimately be removed from the parish. He urged them to show a Christian spirit and to make a fresh start. Yet there was no forgiveness to be found in the hearts of the villagers and, as one, they deserted the church.

Densham became somewhat of a recluse. Barricaded in the rectory behind his barbed-wire fence, he emerged only to attend church. Having no congregation, it was said that he filled the pews with cardboard cut outs of past rectors of the church to represent his missing flock. Then, having preached his sermons to an empty church each week, he would frequently visit the Methodist chapel where he would urge the congregation there to stay away from such activities as visiting the cinema, reading novels or playing whist. He had a particular dislike of smoking and would often admonish people for indulging in what he believed was a disgusting habit.

Warleggan Church. (© N. Sly)

At the onset of the Second World War, Densham became even more isolated. He had raised the fence at the entrance of the rectory to a height of 12ft so that any callers had to announce their arrival by banging on the empty petrol drum that he kept at the gates. He received very few callers, with the exception of a grocer from Bodmin who made a fortnightly delivery of oats, cheese, butter and margarine, which were left just inside the rectory gates. Densham did not shun visitors through choice and made several attempts to let rooms to lodgers. However, when they saw the state of the rectory, which had no electricity or running water and was gradually falling into a state of disrepair, any potential applicants left without taking up the offer of a room.

One man did at least stay overnight. Densham wrote to a choir school in the Midlands, stating that he had a vacancy for an organist. Yet when the man arrived and saw the state of his accommodation and realised that there would be no church choir to work with and no congregation to listen to his music, he hurriedly left the next morning.

Densham had been advised by the bishop to focus on the young people of the area in an attempt to win the approval of their parents and, throughout his incumbency, he never ceased trying to gain the support of the village children. He habitually carried sweets in his pocket, which he would offer to them but, not surprisingly, the children’s parents had warned them about taking anything from him. Now he converted part of the rectory grounds into a playground with a swing, roundabout, sandpit and a cemented boating pool. His efforts were shunned by the local children, as was a series of magic lantern slide shows that he planned for them.

Thinking that he might accept wartime evacuees into the rectory, Densham went to considerable effort to refurbish the rooms with bunkbeds and built-in cupboards and shelves. In anticipation of the children’s arrival, he also purchased a chip fryer and a large quantity of potatoes. His work was inspected by the authorities who later wrote to him stating that, since there was no woman available to look after the children, they could not consider the rectory as a suitable billet for evacuees.

Now completely ostracised by all but a very few of the locals Densham set about transforming the rectory into a representation of the Bible lands, each room decorated to represent a particular area. Although he continued to preach at the church, his entries in the Church Register invariably documented ‘No congregation attended.’

This was the case at Christmas in 1952, when his sermon ‘God is Love’ was, as usual, delivered to an empty church. However, in the new year, he unexpectedly found himself with an audience for his sermon on ‘Level-headedness’. The strangeness of his situation in the small community of Warleggan had finally attracted the attention of the outside world and two journalists attended his church service with a view to writing articles about him. One came from the local paper, the Western Morning News, while the other came from further afield, representing the American magazine Life. Two days later, Densham died.

Shortly after the visit from the two journalists, villagers realised that they could no longer see smoke issuing from the rectory chimneys. Their banging on the petrol drum at the rectory gates elicited no response from within, so the police were called. When officers broke into the rectory, they found eighty-three-year-old Frederick Densham lying dead on the landing. He had obviously realised that death was fast approaching and had tried to get to his bedroom to die in bed but had not made it. His last act before death had been to pile apples on a table with labels indicating that they should be distributed among those villagers who were ill.

Just one solitary mourner attended Densham’s funeral – his solicitor. The reverend’s request to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in the rectory garden was ignored and instead they were scattered in the official Garden of Remembrance in Plymouth. In accordance with Densham’s wishes, no memorial marked his last resting place.