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Case the first: The Disappearing Mansion
Miss Ruth Wynne, writing from Rougham Rectory, Bury St. Edmunds, in March 1934, reports as follows.
"I came to live at Rougham, four miles from Bury St. Edmunds, in 1926. The district was then entirely new to me, and I and my pupil, a girl of 10, spent our afternoon walks exploring it. One dull, damp afternoon, I think in October 1926, we walked off through the fields to look at the church of the neighbouring village, Bradfield St. George. In order to reach the church, which we could see plainly ahead of us to the right, we had to pass through a farmyard, whence we came out on to a road.
We had never previously taken this particular walk, nor did we know anything about the topography of the hamlet of Bradfield St. George. Exactly opposite us on the further side of the road and flanking it, we saw a high wall of greenish-yellow bricks. The road ran past us for a few yards, then curved away from us to the left. We walked along the road, following the brick wall round the bend, where we came upon tall, wrought-iron gates set in the wall. I think the gates were shut, or one side may have been open.
The wall continued on from the gates and disappeared round the curve. Behind the wall, and towering above it, was a cluster of tall trees. From the gates a drive led away among these trees to what was evidently a large house. We could just see a corner of the roof above a stucco front, in which I remember noticing some windows of Georgian design. The rest of the house was hidden by the branches of the trees. We stood by the gates for a moment, speculating as to who lived in this large house, and I was rather surprised that I had not already heard of the owner amongst the many people who had called on my mother since our arrival in the district....
My pupil and I did not take the same walk again until the following spring. It was, as far as I can remember, a dull afternoon, with good visibility, in February or March. We walked up through the farmyard as before, and out on to the road, where, suddenly, we both stopped dead of one accord and gasped. "Where's the wall" we queried simultaneously. It was not there. The road was flanked by nothing but a ditch, and beyond the ditch lay a wilderness of tumbled earth, weeds, mounds, all overgrown with the trees which we had seen on our first visit. We followed the road on round the bend, but there were no gates, no drive, no corner of a house to be seen. We were both very puzzled.
At first we thought that our house and wall had been pulled down since our last visit, but closer inspection showed a pond and other small pools amongst the mounds where the house had been visible. It was obvious that they had been there a long time." No one in the neighborhood had ever heard of the house.
Case the second: Baby Ray and his Little Brother
In this case a child had died at the age of eight months, and his little brother, aged two years and seven months, said to his mother every day after this, 'Mamma, baby calls Ray.'
"He would leave his play to say this, and wake mother at night to tell her, saying, 'He wants Ray to come where he is; you must not cry when Ray goes . . . ' One day [Ray] came running as fast as he could run, through the dining room where stood the table with baby's high chair (which Ray now used) at the side. I never saw him so excited, and he grabbed my dress and pulled me to the dining-room door, jerked it open, saying, "Oh, Mamma, Mamma, come quick; baby is sitting in his high chair." As soon as he opened the door and looked at the chair he said, " Oh, Mamma, why didn't you hurry; now he is gone. . . ." The child, who had been perfectly well, was taken ill and died nine weeks after his brother.
Case the third: The Midnight Visitation
Mrs. P. and her husband had gone to bed, but she, wrapped in her dressing-gown, was lying on the ouside of the bed, waiting to attend to her baby, which lay in a cot beside her. The lamp was still alight and the door of the room was locked.
She says, 'I was just pulling myself into a half sitting posture against the pillows, thinking of nothing but the arrangements for the following day, when, to my great astonishment I saw a gentleman standing at the foot of the bed, dressed as a naval officer, and with a cap on his head having a projecting peak. The light being in the position which I have indicated, the face was in shadow to me, and the more so that the visitor was upon his arms which rested on the foot rail of the bed--I was too astonished to be afraid, but simply wondered who it could be; and instantly touching my husband's shoulder (whose face was turned from me), I said, "Willie, who is this?"
My husband turned, and, for a second or two, lay looking in intense astonishment at the intruder; then, lifting himself a little, he shouted, " What on earth are you doing here, sir? " Meanwhile the form, slowly drawing himself into an upright position, now said, in a commanding yet reproachful voice, "Willie, Willie !"
I looked at my husband and saw that his face was white and agitated. As I turned towards him he sprang out of bed as though to attack the man, but stood by the bedside as if afraid, or in great perplexity, while the figure calmly and slowly moved towards the wall at right angles with the lamp.... As it passed the lamp, a deep shadow fell upon the room as of a material person shutting out the light from us by his intervening body, and he disappeared, as it were, into the wall.
My husband now, in a very agitated manner, caught up the lamp and, turning to me, said, "I mean to look all over the house and see where he is gone." I was by this time exceedingly agitated too, but, remembering that the door was locked, and that the mysterious visitor had not gone towards it at all, remarked, "He has not gone out by the door. But without pausing, my husband unlocked the door, hastened out of the room, and was soon searching the whole house.'
Mrs. P. was wondering if the apparition could indicate that her brother, who was in the Navy, was in some trouble, when her husband came back and exclaimed, 'Oh no, it was my father!' She continues, 'My husband's father had been dead fourteen years: he I had been a naval officer in his young life.' During the following weeks Mr. P. became very ill and then disclosed to his wife that he had got into financial difficulties and, at the time of the apparition, was inclined to take the advice of a man who would probably have ruined him.
Case the fourth: A Very Haunted House
It may be as well to take one of the best observed and best authenticated ghost-cases on record, that of the 'Morton' ghost....Miss R. C. Morton (pseudonym), a medical student, evidently had, from the way she reports her researches, a well-balanced, scientific mind and was free from superstitious fears. These are the details of the case:
- The hauntings lasted for seven years, from 1882 to 1889.
- During this period about twenty people heard the ghost and of these at least seven saw it; probably more.
- The hauntings rose to a peak period in 1885, and after I886 gradually faded away.
- The figure was usually taken for a real person by those who saw it for the first time.
- All the observers agreed as to the description of the figure, which was tall, wearing a dark dress with widow's weeds, with one hand usually half hidden in the folds and a handkerchief held to the face. One observer did not see the handkerchief. The face was never well seen, but the general description tallied with the appearance and habits of Mrs. S., the second wife of a former tenant.
- The house dated from about 1860 and had only been occupied by two families before the Morton family, and their history was known.
- The phenomena consisted of the visual apparition, which followed, more or less, a routine, going down the stairs from the bedroom landing to the drawing-room, standing at a particular spot in the bow-window, then leaving the drawing-room by the door, going along the passage and disappearing by the garden door. Also footsteps were heard by many percipients always of the same description. 'Her footstep is very light,' says Miss Morton,'you can hardly hear it except on the linoleum, and then only like a person walking softly with thin boots on.' The swish of woollen drapery was also heard. These footsteps were unlike any of those of the Morton family. All the servants were changed during the period of the hauntings; but the footsteps went on unaltered. There were other sounds, especially during the peak period, of bumps, turning of door-handles, heavy and irregular footsteps, heavy thuds and bumpings, noises like heavy articles, such as boots, being thrown across the passage, and the sound of something heavy being dragged.
- The sounds were sometimes collectively perceived, as many as five persons having heard them at once. The visual apparition never seems to have been actually seen by more than one person at a time ; but it was on one occasion seen by the four Miss Mortons in quick succession in four consecutive positions on its route from the drawing-room to the orchard.
- Besides the evidence of awareness of its situation provided by the behaviour of the figure, in walking up and down stairs, through doorways and along passages, etc. (Miss Morton once saw the figure deliberately walk round her father, who could not see it), on more than one occasion it stopped and looked as if about to speak when Miss Morton addressed it.
Case the fifth: A Soldier's Tale
During the time of the American Civil War, the sergeant-major of a regiment of Volunteer Infantry was taken to the hospital in a dying condition.
'During all the afternoon', says the assistant surgeon, he could only speak in whispers, and at 11 p.m. he to all appearance died. I was standing beside his father by the bed, and when we thought him dead the old man put forth his hand and closed the mouth of the corpse, and I, thinking he might faint in the keenness of his grief, said " Don't do that! perhaps he will breathe again," and immediately led him to a chair in the back part of the room, and returned, intending to bind up the fallen jaw and close the eyes myself. As I reached the bedside the supposed dead man looked suddenly up in my face and said, "Doctor, what day of the month is it!" I told him the day of the month, and he answered, "That is the day I died." His father had sprung to the bedside, and turning his eyes on him, he said, "Father, our boys have taken Fort Henry, and Charlie [his brother] isn't hurt. I've seen mother and the children, and they are well." He then gave quite comprehensive directions regarding his funeral....' He again asked the date; said 'That's the day I died,' and instantly was dead. The narrator adds that the fort was taken and the brother uninjured.
These cases were recorded by G.N.M. Tyrell, in his classic work Apparitions, written in 1942 and published in 1953 by the Society for Psychical Research. Mr. Tyrrell was a man of science, trained as an engineer, but later became interested in apparitions purely as a scientific phenomenon.
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