The way the first story is reported leaves me with lots of questions. Not least because it was Colin's honeymoon and now he's divorced. Plus he says the bizarre thing that the portrait he was shown matched the ghostly figure he saw from the nose up. One wonders how much suggestion was involved - especially once he told the management. Alan the pottery teacher seems wholly convincing in his delivery. His story is exactly the reason why I love this series so much. But for me, Trish Robertson is the epitome of the non-scientific investigator, stuffed with her own preconceptions about what a haunting is and what it requires to be explained. She wants some sort of historical story that she can pin the phenomena to - and why should it be like that at all? It's more interesting that the occurence with the glaze buckets mirrors Alan's specialist knowledge and intentions. That surely points to something more intriguing than the usual 'person murdered, needs the help of a medium to be returned to their rightful place in the afterlife' type explanation that these people usually like to put forward. It's also nice that Tony Cornell seems to have a more rational approach.
Narrator: Tony Cornell is a dedicated and committed psychic
investigator: a ghost hunter. He is one of several hundred such people in this
country who spend a great deal of their time researching into the details of
psychic events. They come from all walks of life, and many of the professions:
there are historians and doctors, scientists and lawyers. They are searching in
a sense for the holy grail: the paranormal event that will prove beyond doubt
the reality of another existence. On the way they investigate all kinds of events
in all kinds of situations, to lift the veil, however briefly, on that other
world. For Tony Cornell, one of his most fascinating stories is the ghost at
the Bell Inn. It involves Colin and his wife on their honeymoon.
Colin: I never did believe in ghosts whatsoever. I had no
interest, no… no thought about them whatsoever. I definitely do now, there’s no
two ways in my mind.
Tony Cornell, Paranomal Investigator: It seemed to start
with that he got just about everything that you’d have in a case, and that
seemed in a way exceptional. And the case is fascinating from the point of view
that there’s thirty seven different events occurring over those three days over
there, to two people who didn’t believe in ghosts, who’d never had any
experience like this before. But the more I looked at it, the more I heard his
account, there’s no doubt whatever that he had had a genuine experience.
Colin: This is the actual room in the Bell Hotel at Thetford
where myself and my previous wife spent our honeymoon. The bed in the corner is
the actual bed that I slept in when most of the occurrences took place over the three days we were here
[a four-poster bed is shown]. We arrived on the Friday evening, came up to the
room, and there was a cold spot outside the door. As I unlocked the door and
went to open it, I felt as if something pushed against the door from the other
side. I didn’t really take much notice of it, just thought oh perhaps it’s an
old door, whathaveyou. Um, came into the room, got changed, went down for
dinner, came back up – same thing again. Cold spot outside the door, um, door
hard to open. Came in, went to bed. Um, we both heard footsteps outside the
door in the corridor, going up and down, up and down. Then they were inside the
room, as though somebody was pacing across the floor. There was a glow appeared
in the corner of the mural [mirror?] which we both saw. Um, and I sort of
dropped off to sleep. I even thought it was perhaps a reflection from something.
Round about three to four in the morning I woke up, and a young girl was stood
in the middle of the room. Um – for a start I thought it was somebody who
shouldn’t have been in the room, a maid or whatever. She walked across the room
and vanished near the window. She was
not transparent, as if the ghost in a story book, where they come in and you
can see the fireplace behind them. She was solid, um – so real and so lifelike
that you actually mistook her for a real person.
Narrator: The Bell Inn goes back a long way, around three
hundred years, and it’s linked with all kinds of stories. Both guests and staff
have had many unexplained experiences here. But undoubtedly one of the most
persistent stories concerns the ghostly woman in room number ten. In fact she’s
known to the staff as ‘Betty’.
Terry: I’ve seen something in both of the rooms, eight and
room six, and both times the experiences were very similar. I’d be in there
making the bed, and suddenly I’d have this weird feeling that somebody was watching
me, and I would turn round, and there’d be nobody there but there was this – it
was like a white haze. It wasn’t menacing or frightening or anything, it was
just there and it just sort of floated past me and went through the wall. And
that happened in both those rooms. My first experience of seeing the ghost in
room ten was when I was in there making the bed with one of the other girls,
and we were having a bit of a laugh and joke, and we asked Betty if she’d been
a good girl and whether she’d let our guests get a good night’s sleep. And with
that, the room went terribly cold, and we had this funny sensation of getting
goosebumps all over. It was just like every hair on our bodies stood on end. We
sort of both looked at each other and both ran out of the room.
Narrator: On the second night of the honeymoon, the ghost of
the young girl came again.
Colin: The apparition actually appeared in front of the
settee. She walked from there, acrossed a straight path, and disappeared just
before she reached the small chest of drawers that is in front of the window,
which overlooks the church yard. It was if she was looking out of the window,
towards, in that direction. She was twelve to thirteen years of age, fair hair,
long white gown, garland around her head, um, puffed out sleeves. She was
almost self-illuminating, even though it was dark you could see her clearly.
That morning I was taken downstairs by the manager, I think it was the
assistant manager. And he showed me a portrait which hangs downstairs, and I
was slightly, um… taken aback. The actual portrait, from the nose upwards, was
an older version of the girl’s face, who was actually in the room the previous
night.
Narrator: ‘Betty’ is Betty Radcliffe. She was the wife of an
owner of the Bell Inn, and eventually inherited the Inn herself. She died in
1829. There is a legend of a tragic affair with one of the servants of the inn,
that led to her death. But Tony Cornell is loathe to accept a story for which
he can find no historical verification.
Tony: Many of the stories which we do investigate have
suffered from embellishment and adding and whatnot. It seems in some ways I
think that we humans like a mystery, and having found a good mystery we can’t
leave it alone, we add to it. I don’t think that applies to the case we’re
dealing with at the moment.
Narrator: On the third night Colin did his best to keep
awake. He wasn’t frightened but he was deeply intrigued by what was going on.
Colin: I lay on the bed the other way around to what you
normally would. I’d like got my head on my hands, watching the television. And
I heard a tapping noise – it was as if the noise a radiator makes when it’s got
an airlock, a constant tap. I looked across to the wardrobe, and the actual
handle was moving up and down on its own. It was actually tapping against the
wardrobe. I then looked back to the television, and the television picture was
flickering. I thought for a minute perhaps it was interference, something like
that, and then I looked down behind at an angle, and you could actually see the
wire, the actual aerial lead being moved in a whipping fashion, as if somebody
had got hold of the end and whipped. My ex-wife was not too happy at this
point, she was getting rather worried about the whole thing. On previous nights
I’d slept on the right hand side of the bed, nearest the wall. This last night
I slept on the left hand side of the bed, and the lamp was left on. Again
during the night there was the running up and down the hall, there was the
footsteps inside the room, and the glowing light seemed this time to appear on
the other side of the mirral [mirror?]. During the night, the footsteps again
in the room. And it was just about daylight, it was getting daylight, and I was
laying asleep in bed. I woke up and the girl was sitting on the edge of the
bed, literally at my feet. But she wasn’t looking away, she was actually
looking at me. She slowly got up, and all the time she was looking at me as she
went around the bed. So she looked, she kept her focus on me as she got up,
went round the bed, she walked slowly towards the window. And it was actually a
physical thing, because the bed lifted as she got off the bed, you could feel
the mattress rise. She actually turned and walked towards the window, and
disappeared again.
Narrator: The professional ghost hunters see their main role
to dig out the truth about a story – to separate fact from imagination, legend
from historical accuracy. What, for example, is there in the historical record
to establish some kind of historical verification? How reliable are the witnesses?
Tony Cornell: My view and my attitude is that it’s one of
the most important cases that we’ve had from the point of view of truth and
actual phenomena, for quite a number of years. Because of the fact that we got
into the investigation so early. The questions I put to Colin, they all tie up,
it all comes up as truth. He doesn’t slip anywhere, and particularly as he’s a
man who knew nothing about it, neither did his wife, weren’t interested in the
subject – thought it was all junk – what they’ve come out with are the genuine
facts you come out with in a real live (dead, if you like) ghost story.
Narrator: What do you do if you have a ghostly experience?
It’s not an easy question to answer. You may believe it will never confront
you. But from our researches up and down the country it’s a question that many
more people than you would expect are faced with. And people react in very different
ways. Some, for example, just refuse to talk about it. Some turn to their
doctor, others to a priest. But eventually many of them end up talking to a
professional ghost hunter. That was the case with our second story, which comes
from Paisley in Scotland. A series of unexplained events in, of all places, the
art department of the local college.
Alan, Pottery Teacher: It was in early February, an
afternoon, somewhere between four and five in the afternoon, when I had been
working down here in the pottery. I’d been throwing and dressing a big pot on
the wheel, and my workshop steward Peter was with me. Now to enable us to have
peace to work on this because it was quite a delicate job, and it being a quiet
afternoon, we locked the outer doors, and the classroom door, and the glazing
room was also locked. So that everything was absolutely locked fast. I had just
finished a particularly delicate section of the pot when, much to our surprise,
we heard the door open. First we heard the key turn in the lock, and then the
door opened and shut. And the sound of a heavy foot on the stone step. This
then changed into the sound of the heavy feet walking on the wooden floor –
heavy treads, somewhere about ten in all. Not… forgetting actually that the
room had been locked, I said to Peter – Check, see who that is. And he looked,
and as soon as he looked, the footsteps stopped. We looked at each other, we
were quite surprised at this. Um, checked the door was locked, everything was
as it was – no-one in the building at all. So back to the pot, and continued
working on it. And within less than half an hour this happened another, twice.
Exactly the same thing: door opening, shutting. Heavy feet on the stone step,
changing to the muffled echo of the feet on the, on the wooden planks. And
stopped again, instantly, when we looked round the door to see what was what.
No-one was there, the doors were all locked, no-one in the building at all.
Phyllis: About quarter past six when we went to have a cup
of tea, the doors were all locked, we had done our work. There was nobody in
the building, and we locked the doors because we were isolated here. So we went
into the staff room, which is here [indicates]. I was sitting facing the door,
Betty was to the side. And we heard this door opening, from down the bottom
end. The footsteps coming up and coming up, and as they go up to the door I
just let out a scream and jumped in Betty’s lap!
Betty: So I went to the staff room door, and I come out and
I shouted ‘Is anybody there?’ and there was no answer. So I looked in that
room, the next and then the other room, and I just come back up and said to
Phyllis, there’s nobody there. And she goes ‘Well who was it, who was it?’ I
said ‘I don’t know.’ She said ‘Come on..’
Phyllis: We never heard any footsteps going away. You know
they just stopped at the door, that was it.
Betty: There was nobody there, so we just went away. Got our
coats and…
Phyllis: – Ran!
Narrator: Footsteps, voices, whisperings behind the door.
The unexplained events became more numerous. But on one notable occasion there
was a clear demonstration of immense strength. Alan came into his studio to
find that not only had it been completely rearranged, but that three heavy
pots, each weighing two or three hundredweight, had been lifted up onto the
bench. An extreme example of what ghost hunters call an ‘apport’.
Alan: One of the strangest incidents was concerned with the
moving of glaze bins. Now these bins are full of actual glaze, which is to be
put on actual bisque-fired pots. Now one would normally lay out all the pots
ready for firing prior to glaze. On this particular morning all the pots had
been moved. They’d been moved from the normal storage areas, which were in some
cases locked in cupboards elsewhere in the building, and had been
systematically laid out on the tables using the same procedure as I would
normally have used prior to glazing. The only difference was, that these big
glaze bins were up on the actual tables. Now it took three of us to lift these
back down again, such is the weight. Now not a drop of glaze had been spilt. No
pots had been glazed, but er, the whole place was laid out just ready for
glazing to begin. Now I couldn’t explain this.
Narrator: Most of the happenings in the studio were known to
only one or two people. But late one evening there was an event that involved a
whole class of students.
Alan: We had fourteen, fifteen people in the pottery working
all evening. And the temperature as very
high, somewhere in the seventies or eighties. On finishing we locked the door
and I went for my jacket. One of the students ran down the corridor and said, ‘You’ve
locked someone in.’ I said, ‘It can’t be, it’s a Yale lock, people can open it
from the inside.’ And the door was vibrating violently. [Pauses]. Again and
again and again. Um, I took the key and opened the door, somewhat, er… with
trepidation, shall we say! And I was met by a rush of icy cold air. The
temperature in the actual room, in the pottery was freezing, it was like
walking into a winter’s night. Now this has all happened within five minutes,
ten minutes. All the doors were shut, and the place was all securely locked.
Narrator: Eventually the story reached the ears of a local
paranormal investigator, Trish Robertson.
Trish Robertson, Paranormal Investigator: It’s undoubtable
that in this particular college the sound phenomena is absolutely amazing. I
mean many witnesses have witnessed the footsteps coming along stone stairs,
going onto wooden floors, onto stone stairs again – and just nobody there.
Absolutely amazing and it’s been witnessed by so many people that it’s
undoubtedly happened. The feeling of people being behind people, someone behind
you, look behind you all the time, is always there with a lot of people. They
cannot put their finger on that. One of the cleaners heard whispering in a
supposedly locked room, to discover no-one there again. These things are once
again not uncommon. Now in this particular college we cannot get to the bottom
of why this should be so. We don’t have enough history of the place at the
moment to find out just what’s going on.
Narrator: Professional paranormal investigators, notably the
Society for Psychical Research, have been around for well over one hundred
years. They have amassed a quite remarkable archive that includes every
conceivable kind of paranormal and psychical events, eyewitness accounts,
historical researches and so on. It is quite an extraordinary record. When they’re
called into a case they can rarely if ever offer and explanation. What they can
do is offer some kind of reassurance by putting the events into some kind of
context, placing them in the paranormal world. But they have not achieved that
for which they were established in the first place, namely scientific proof of
the paranormal.
Tony Cornell: I’m inclined to think that over the years it’s
become a too difficult subject to explain for science. But I’m also inclined to
think that perhaps a scientist might produce in time, perhaps a little bit of
the jigsaw puzzle that I’m trying to fit together, and that’ll help us answer
all the many questions that we still have. We don’t know really what we’re
dealing with. We know that these things happen, there’s no doubt whatever that
there are such things as poltergeists, there are such things as ghosts. Too many
sane and sensible people, I’ve met, at any rate, have seen these things and experienced
things. And I myself, I think I hope I’ve got my feet on the ground – I’ve seen
some seven very violent poltergeist cases. Now if these things are happening,
science has got to come up with an answer.
David Fontana, Prof. of Psychology: I think personally that
there’s a great danger in imagining that we’re always progressing. Sometimes we
can learn more if we look back across the centuries and find what people were
saying or doing then, than looking forward into the future. And also by looking
at other cultures and seeing how they react, we can learn more than by looking
at our own. My own hope is that science would be able to understand this, and
my own prediction would be in fact we would see that mind and brain are not the
same, and that the non-locality theory, which is now achieving quite a lot of
attention among scientists, and that is that the mind is separate from the
brain but is normally operating through it, that this would perhaps be
established within science, and that we would find that it is indeed direct
contact between mind and mind that allows for these phenomena like telepathy to
actually happen.
Archie Roy, Prof. of Astronomy: The whole body of the
psychic phenomenon is an indication that there are, to quote one of the
communicators, there are seas to be explored. And we’ve only been on the shore
of that ocean, and a whole sea of truth is before us. And we deny it, we ignore
it, at our peril, because quite frankly unless we understand human personality
and what it is all about, we’re going to go into the 21stcentury and
the human situation will be immeasurably worse than it is today. But if we can
understand human personality and the drives that come to it and makes it tick,
then hopefully the 21stcentury will be immeasurably better.
