Ghost Hunters – The Phantom Schoolmaster

Now I've had a bit of experience tracking people down in the census. It's not easy, and you can see what you want to see when you're dealing with a common name (perhaps like Cook) - you think you've found people when you probably haven't. Plus "Keith" doesn't seem like a very Victorian name, but perhaps it is. You can see the alleged census in the link below. It could say Keith. Especially when you want it to.

The Wikipedia page for Ghosthunters (curiously one word, yet the title is clearly two words on the programme) suggests Fraudulence. It currently reads "It subsequently came to light that the case for "finding" the supposed schoolmaster in the official census of 1841 was based on fraudulently altered documentation." It doesn't offer any proof of that though.

However, it's very interesting that Ian Cashmore tells quite a different story on BBC Lincolnshire, to his position in Ghost Hunters. He says that a psychic medium came in and communicated the information about Keith - that it didn't come from a ouija board at all. That's quite a different kettle of fish. Not only is it a discrepancy in his story, which is a bit odd to say the least. But it also allows for the "psychic" to have obtained the information herself by ordinary means, and then passed it on as A Message From Beyond. And then of course Mr Cook could have been refound in the same mundane way. I'm not saying that's what happened. But it's certainly a possibility. It also makes Ian's little drama about 'looking up and seeing the words Free School' a complete nonsense, as he writes that the psychic told him the teacher had been working at the school a few hundred yards away from the 'haunted studio'. It's very unsatisfactory. One wants to believe that people in this documentary are at least telling their truth as they remember it. But in this case, Ian is lying or at least has a Very Bad Memory in  one or more of his accounts.

Eddie Burks, Psychic Medium: I draw a parallel between using a Ouija board, asking whoever’s there to respond, is rather like living in a city with a notice on the front door, ‘Everybody Welcome,’ ‘Anybody Welcome!’ Sooner or later somebody will come in and do damage.

Ian: One thing I found from doing Ouija boards before is that it doesn’t answer anything unless you ask the question, so you have to be very thorough, and make sure you’ve asked everything you need to ask. It wouldn’t necessarily go on and tell you ‘what he did, where he lived’. You’d actually have to ask the question. So it’s quite easy to miss things out. So the next question we asked was, how long had he been dead. And in a process of actually spelling out letter for letter, it said 150 years.

Narrator: Watford is an old market town that lies a few miles to the NW of London. It’s a town that goes back a long way. St Mary’s Church for example, dates from the middle of the 13^th Century. Today it’s a typical busy crowded suburban centre with lots going on. Our story comes from a part of the town where the old and the new come together. The ancient church, a row of old Georgian houses, and a bustling modern shopping centre. In one of the shops, which is used as a studio, some of the staff began to notice some strange things going on. Nothing particularly frightening or alarming, but disturbing and nervous-making, mainly because they kept happening and they couldn’t be explained in any rational way.

Debbie: The staff were very edgy and walked round in twos, saying all these little stories about ‘things that go bump in the night!’ I thought someone was trying to wind me up. I’d heard little things but I didn’t think much was going on, because I hadn’t seen visual proof of what was happening. (Laughs) - It started pretty weird. The camera would sort of turn itself on and turn itself off, lights would go on and off, and I really thought there was somebody in the studio who was doing it to wind up everybody else.

Sharon: There was a lot of talk about the atmosphere within. There’d been lots of things happening, pictures flying off the wall. Nobody liked to be in the studio on their own, you know, after hours, because it was such a frightening atmosphere. So they tended to all, like scoot off together at the end of the day. They were scared, yeah people were scared.

Ian Cashmore, Consultant: Well what would happen is that we would lock up the studio at the end of the night. On the wall of the studio there were a series of portraits, because by the nature of the business we had lots of families and lots of groups of children in to be photographed. So what we would do is take a whole variety of shots, and then on the wall those would be reproduced as a series of portraits. So we’d have like mum and dad, then a family picture, two children picture, all from the same family, up on the wall. What would happen is that we would leave the studio, lock up and go, erm and we’d arrive in the morning and find that maybe the mother’s portrait would be substituted or switched with a mother from another group. Or we’d generally come in and find that the items in the particular groups had moved around.

Debbie: The camera’s actually set up onto a computer system so it’ll tell us when the film is finished, when the supply of film has run out, how many exposures we’ve got left on the tape, and how full the camera is really. And it would say only two exposures left when I knew there was a brand new film in the camera. So you’d have to stop and change the film, and then you’d do a family sitting, normally about seven or eight photographs. And then it’d tell you the film was empty, so you’d have to change it again. And after about the third go you just got fed up of it. So you’d just have to reset the camera and carry on going. Erm, but in the middle of sittings you’d turn round and say ‘Hang on a minute folks, I’ve just got to change the film!’ And it gets frustrating.

Narrator: Eventually, because these happenings seemed to be increasing, three or four people decided to hold a Ouija board session. It was all very light-hearted and inconsequential, more curiosity than anything else. But they wondered if they could learn something about what was causing the disturbances. The Ouija board is a very old device,  the ancient Egyptians used them to contact dead spirits. More recently in Victorian times they became immensely fashionable across Europe and America – all kinds of prominent people in society took part in Ouija board sessions. Today it’s become something of a party game. But there are many people who would claim to have had some kind of unexplained experience as a result of using them.

Perry: We set the Ouija board up, and within a few minutes the glass was flying across the board. About 10 o’clock that evening I decided to go home. I got in the car and I looked in the rear view mirror. There was an old lady sitting on the back seat. Very clear. Clear enough for me to describe her. When I turned around she disappeared. I didn’t think a great deal more of it until the following week when we did the Ouija board again. But this time I asked the Ouija board who it was in the back of my car. The board, and the glass, very clearly spelt out the name BEA, it then went on to say that this was my great grandmother, and she was in the back of the car with me all the time. Well I don’t know the name of my great grandmother, so I then the following day called my grandmother and asked for the name of my great grandparents. She told me that her mother’s name was Beatrice and that she was always known as Bea. This was kind of nice because there was the feeling that it was all true, that there was really something to it, that it couldn’t have been made up by the girls or something. The following week we did the Ouija board again, and I got in the car about 10 o’clock, looked in my rear view mirror and there she was again, just as clear as the time before. A short while later I was just approaching my home, and a very good friend of mine lived on the left hand side of some traffic lights, where I pulled up. I hooted, he came to the window, and he waved. He went away, he came back again within a few seconds, and seemed to inspect the car a little more closely, waved, and went away again. I went home and thought no more of it until the following morning… When he phoned me and asked me who was sitting in the back of my car. When I asked him why he did he ask that, he said - well did you not see me return to the window, because I knew you must be on your way home, therefore why would there be someone sitting in the back of the car? But whoever it was was waving at me.

Narrator: But for all its apparent casualness, those in the know about such things, particularly psychic mediums and parapsychologists who spend a great deal of time dealing with the after effects of psychic effects, constantly warn of the dangers of dabbling in the paranormal in this or indeed any other way. It can, they argue, have all sorts of unexplained and unwanted results.

Rev. Tom Willis: We find that often when people have been to fortune tellers or astrologers, or dabbled with the Ouija boards or tarot cards, that often what happens – the information to begin with is very good and interesting and factual. They actually find that the information is accurate. So after a while they begin to trust the source of this information. And then suddenly it seems to change tack and begins to feed them inaccurate stuff. Sometimes absolute lies. Sometimes threatening them with death or very serious accidents. Sometimes throwing doubt on other previously trustworthy relationships. In one case a brother, two brothers and the wife of one of them played with the Ouija board and it gave a lot of information that was accurate, and suddenly one day said ‘your brother is having an affair with your wife’. And they were all stunned by this. And luckily the husband knew there was no chance of this happening. And they took the board out of the house and burnt it immediately.

Narrator: The assumption behind this kind of warning, clearly supported by the experience of Tom Willis, is that there are spirits or entities or whatever involved in some kind of parallel existence, and if the channel of communication is opened up, they will make their presence felt.

Eddie Burks, Psychic Medium: The trouble with using Ouija boards as erm, as a means of satisfying curiosity, which young people often do, is that they go into it unprotected. And the, the – I draw a parallel between using a Ouija board, asking whoever’s there to respond, is rather like living in a city with a notice on the front door, ‘Everybody Welcome’ – Anybody Welcome! And so sooner or later somebody will come in that will do damage. And there are plenty of spirits of a fairly lowly sort, who are plain mischievous, who are able to mimic and pretend that they are much better souls than they really are, until they get you trapped in following their silly instructions. And by that time they’ve established such a rapport with you, or you with them, that you can’t let go - they can’t let go of you and won’t let go of you, and they can make your life a misery.

Colin Wilson, Philosopher: I was always fascinated by the experience of an American editor who had begun playing about with a Ouija board, until he found to his dismay that one of these damned spirits had got inside his head and was permanently talking! He said it was the spirit of a Nantucket sea captain who seemed to be envious of the fact that he was alive and the Nantucket sea captain was dead! Well he said, some friend of his who knew about these things got him to go along, and did something or other which he’s not described. He had to write with his hands – something took him over and his hand wrote: Each of us has a spirit while alive, do not mess about with the spirits of the dead. And he says, as this happened, he suddenly felt this spirit being pushed out through the top of his head. And he said, as he seemed to pop out of the top of his head like a cork he felt incredible relief, as you can imagine. And he said at that moment he could have told you anything about the future.

Narrator: In Watford no one it seems had any fears about setting up the Ouija board session, though it is noteworthy has wanted to repeat it since. And no one had any particular expectations. When they described it later on, much of what emerged  seems to have been pure gobbledegook. But to their complete astonishment, they did seem to get some coherent information about a particular individual, a former schoolteacher: a name, where he lived, how he died and when.

Ian: The first question we asked was, who was haunting the studio. And it came up with the name of Keith Cook. So the next question we asked was, how long had he been dead. And in the process of actually spelling out letter for letter it said 150 years. And we found out then that he taught at the free school. The next question we asked was why was he haunting the studio. And again the glass moved with our fingers and spelt out letter by letter that he wanted to be near the children. We asked him why he wanted to be near the children, and his answer to that was that he’d been involved in a fire when he’d worked at the school, and several of the children had perished in the fire and he’d actually lost his own life by going back in to save the kids. We were told by Keith Cook that he was a middle aged man, and he’d died during his middle age. He also mentioned that in addition to working at the school he’d also worked at the workhouse which was situated adjacently, and he actually resided at the workhouse. Apparently this was quite a common thing, and people who taught in one often taught in the other.

Narrator: It seems inconceivable that any of this information could have been in the heads of the people who took part in this session. None of it meant very much to them at the time. None of them knew anything about it. But it raised the most fundamental question: Did any of this extraordinary detail check out in the historical records? Nobody who attended the Ouija board session in Watford had any intention of following up the information they seemed to have gained from it. If anything the strange unexplained activity at the studio increased.

Ian: Almost directly after finishing the Ouija board, for the few days after and the weeks after that, the disturbances started to get more and more severe. We thought probably at the beginning that it had been because we knew a bit more about what had been going on. And maybe we’d become slightly more sensitive to the atmosphere that was obviously brewing up in the place.

Debbie: Things got pretty hairy then, it sort of happened so there was more frequency to when the events were happening. There was the backgrounds would still be changing round, things would still be moving, erm, you’d say ‘oh shut up George’ and half an hour wasn’t long enough, he’d be back in ten minutes doing something else. So I think he was really trying to get somebody’s attention, but there was nobody around who could really talk to him and find out what was going on. Or why he was still around.

Sharon: It was a very cold atmosphere. It felt almost dark, like something was kind of surrounding you. It was that heavy. You know, all the hairs on the back of your neck stood up. It was almost like you were being watched, covered. It’s hard to explain. Very heavy, a very heavy presence.

Narrator: But the story tugged away at Ian’s curiosity. There seemed to be so much detail. Could it be possible that Keith Cook, schoolmaster, had existed. But where to begin the search? Watford is a big place with dozens of old schools. But then one day, over a year later, passing a converted office just round the corner, he happened to glance up. His eye was drawn to a plaque on the wall. It contained the words ‘Free School’. Something clicked in his brain. That was how it had come out at the session. It launched Ian on a search that became an obsession. The school, he learned, had been funded as a bequest in 1709.

Ian: There’s an office building which is actually on the site of the old free school building. And on the outside of the free school there’s a plaque that makes reference to the history of the building. There is quite a bit of information written about the school. It had been the first school in the Hertfordshire area for the education of young children who couldn’t afford to be educated privately. The lady who actually started the school and arranged for the building had set aside an amount of money in her will, to make sure that the school always remained a school building.

Narrator: But there was nothing in all that long history that mentioned a master called Keith Cook, though when we looked into it there has been a complete record of minor paranormal activity at the school.

Sue: Myself personally, in the ten years that I’ve worked there, there have been a couple of times when I’ve felt extremely uncomfortable. But you hear the things about ghosts and then you think no, no, no, I’m being silly. But there was one occasion, and it was during the day – it wasn’t one of the late evenings that sometimes I work on my own, it was actually during a Saturday afternoon. On the ground floor,  I went through and I was working quite happily, and I went to go up the stairs. And I felt a sort of buzzing round my ear, and I thought maybe I had a wasp in my hair. And I was sort of brushing my hair and I realised it wasn’t that time of year. And all of a sudden there was this coldness around me. And I don’t quite know what it was, I can’t explain it, but all I knew was on Saturday afternoon I had to get out of that building. So I did no more, and set the alarm and go very very quickly!

Narrator: So where to turn to pick up the thread of Keith Cook. Right next to the school house there was a row of almshouses, or houses built for the poor, that had been there since 1721. Could they possibly have been related to the workhouse or the spirit or entity who had described himself as living 150 years ago. As it happens, the very first national census in this country was carried out just over 150 years ago in 1841. Ian set out to check the census records in Watford for that date, a task that proved much easier to say than to do. It was very difficult indeed to locate the right piece of microfische. But when it came, the result proved to be astounding.

Ian: I went to the Watford library, and looked through the rolls of microfilm they keep there for the census. And the first census they held there is for 1841. After several hours, two or three hours of looking through, and with assistance from the librarians, we found a listing for the Watford Workhouse. And a master was listed there by the name of Keith Cook.

Narrator: The fact of the 1841 census was an extraordinary coincidence. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the reality of the information revealed at the Ouija board session. There had been a Keith Cook. He was a schoolmaster. He had lived in the workhouses 150-odd years ago. When Ian checked the records for 1851, Keith Cook was no longer there. So how had he died? Where was the fire? When he went back to the school records, they showed that there was a strange gap in activities between 1841 and 1842. Almost as if it had closed down. But no reason was given. Then Ian discovered that it had in fact been rebuilt in 1842. Why would a school need to be rebuilt? Could this have been the fire that the spirit or entity had referred to? The Watford fire records didn’t go back further than 1868, so they didn’t really help.  But it looked as if, by some strange quirk of fate, Keith Cook had lived just long enough to be captured by the 1841 census, and then had died in a fire at the school just a few months later, trying to save the children.

Ian: I established the building had been rebuilt in 1842 because there’s a reference to it in a reference book that’s held in the Watford Library, that says that in 1842 the free school was rebuilt. All references prior to that were in the 1700s which would obviously have been the previous school. I can find no other explanation as to why the school would have been rebuilt, with no detailed records kept, other than there was a fire. When we finally found out that Keith Cook had existed I was amazed. After a period of several hours sitting in the library, it was amazing to find out that that person had existed. Until then, it was probably a period of two or three years when we had known name. But until I actually looked into the background of the story – it was an amazing feeling to know he had existed. And gradually, other areas of the story began to slot into place.

Narrator: The story of Keith Cook, Victorian schoolmaster, is undoubtedly an extraordinary one. From the extreme difficulty we had in putting together the details of this man’s life, it’s quite clear that none of the people who attended that single casual session in Watford could have had prior knowledge of his existence. The information that came across was quite remarkable in its detail. The name, his age, where he lived, how he died, even the kind of school he taught at. The fundamental question of course, is where did it come from? How is it possible? That a man that died 150 years ago was able to communicate information about himself to a modern audience. It’s a question that lies way beyond the bounds of conventional science. Like many other stories in this series, it raises the most profound questions about what happens to the human mind after death.

Tom Willis: Sometimes I think that death is so sudden that occasionally some soul refuses to believe that it’s dead. And is invisible, and nobody’s taking any notice of it, and it’s in a permanent nightmare. And it’s trying to say to people, I’m here, I’m here. Do objects fly about like that? You know. Erm, it tries first of all to say ‘Look I am here, do you realise you’re not alone? Now you realise something’s here, now I’ll try and let you know who I am’.

Montague Keen, Society for Psychical Research: One of the many puzzling things is that the capacity of these entities to transmit information – if only in order to prove who they are and that they’ve survived – varies enormously. In some cases it can be extraordinarily detailed, very specific in such a way so as to provide veridical evidence. I.e. evidence that is not known to or apparent to any of the people on this side. Not at any rate until the evidence is checked and found to be accurate. That’s the sort of thing for which there is a great deal of actual evidence which doesn’t admit to any denying.

Archie Roy: To make sense of it we have to step outside the materialist reductionist idea of what a human being is. A very complicated electrochemical physical mechanism. With the mind and the personality seated in the brain’s operations. And that when the brain dies, and is destroyed then that is the end of it. If those cases of apparitions, of information give n that was not in any living person’s mind, are authentic, then it would appear that there is a part of a human being that can operate independent of time and space. I am sure of that. And may even be able to operate independent of mortality.

Ghost Hunters – Spirits of the Civil War

This is a bit of a strange episode. It has various intriguing accounts (mostly first hand) of people who say they've seen apparitions on Marston Moor. Let us charitably overlook the fact that no-one who lives there can escape knowing a lot of stories about the history and the putative ghosts, so might have some expectations about what they might see on a dark and stormy night. But the second half of the programme seems disjointed with the first - the academics talk of survival of consciousness beyond death. I don't think anyone was suggesting that the figures on the moor were conscious entities. It would have been a better time to discuss apparitions. But there we go. I like Ronald Huttons evocatively gruesome storytelling and the first person accounts of the soldiers. So I don't mind.

 

Narrator: These gently rolling fields so typical of the British countryside, are just a few miles from the city of York. This innocent looking landscape is soacked in blood. Beneath it lie thousands of human bones. 350 years ago these fields were the setting for the bloodiest battle ever to be fought on British soil: the battle of Marston Moor. Fought between the soldiers of the king, Charles the first, and the men of Cromwell’s republican army. It was the British equivalent of the Bosnian civil war. Both armies were cut to ribbons. Whole companies, regiments even, were wiped out. The ground was littered with the dead and the dying. Then on the following day the scavengers moved in to strip the bodies and tip the corpses into mass graves. Those graves have never been located. Marston Moor remains the final resting place for thousands of unquiet dead.

Dr. Ronald Hutton, Historian: What happens at Marston Moor is that Prince Rupert sets up a trap whereby the enemy opposite are going to come down from their high dry hill, come over a ditch and a bank and attack his army in the mud of the moor on the far side. It doesn’t happen that way because the enemy opposite know they’re going to get into trouble if they come off their hill and the enemy’s ready. So they wait until the whole day has gone by and the evening has come. Prince Rupert gets tired of waiting and thinks there’ll be no battle and knocks off to have his supper. So do his troopers. That’s the moment when the Parliamentarians decide to attack. They can see camp fires going up which indicate the enemy eating their supper – they’re off their guard. And they can also see the Royalist reinforcements marching up behind – they can’t wait for those people to get there. And therefore the Parliamentarians attack after a thunderstorm of rain. When everything’s soaking wet and the enemy’s at their lowest ebb, they plunge in. After that nothing is left as night falls except to surround the Royalist infantry and kill them or accept their surrender.

Narrator: The Civil war that raged across this country for several years witnessed several bloody battles as Englishman killed Englishmen.  But Marston Moor stands out as a field of slaughter. When the footsoldiers were trapped in the heart of the battle and cut to pieces by the wheeling cavalry, no quarter was given. Famous regiments were cut down to the last man.

Ronald Hutton: The crack regiment from York, the famous white coats - The crack regiment of the Royalist General of the north, Lord Newcastle, fights to the death. It’s offered mercy again and again but it refuses to take it. It’s Colonel was shot from his horse. And many men closed muskets and pikes together inside a hedged enclosure. And that’s their cemetery. They fight on and on and on, shot down from all sides. And until there are about a handful remaining. And those are taken prisoner as they fall wounded upon the field. A moon comes out, lighting up the whole ghastly scene – the plunging horses, the screaming and falling men, the pikes waving like poles in a beanfield in a high wind. And ever and again the puffs of musket smoke coming up from the hedged and entrenched musketeers, as the lead shot whistles and plunges again and again into human bodies. The country people are brought in and they dig deep pits. They count 4200 bodies slung into one group of pits alone. It’s very unusual to sustain that amount of carnage on a battlefield in the Civil War. You’ll remember this is an old-fashioned war with no antiseptics, no antibiotics, no anaesthetics, so that for every person dying in the field you can reckon maybe two or three dying of their wounds later. We’ll never know the butcher’s bill – maybe 8000, maybe more as a result of that day.

Narrator: Over 5000 men lie buried in nameless ditches here. The farmers ploughing the fields have turned up all kinds of fragments of weapons, buttons and buckles and so on. But no-one has so far discovered the mass graves. This pond is thought to be one of them. But ever since that hot July day in 1644, there have been stories of men in Cavalier or Roundhead clothing, apparently seeking to escape from the carnage.

Sue, Landlady: Well there are many legends associated with the battle. One of them is the Roundheads marching up Bloody Lane. Whether or not they do, they’re supposed to be only seen the top half of them, and you can hear the clank of the armour and the sort of noise of the battle, sometimes. Again there’s the headless horseman. He rides across the ridge, erm – different people have seen different things, but basically it’s all Cavaliers and Roundheads!

Dorothy, Local resident: People will never go along the road the night of the battle, the 4^th of July 1644, the anniversary of that is considered a time when you see ghosts, because so many people have seen, erm, civil war soldiers going up and down that lane, which is [?] lane between the two villages of Marston and Tockworth. And I do believe it because so many things have happened in the vicinity of Long Marston. People even to this day are seeing things.

Sue: I think you’ve got to  be a little bit of a sceptic, because locals tend to colour everything rather a lot to make it sound better! But over the years they tend to open up and they come out with varied and colourful tales, but out of all of them you can pick out the few that tend to crop up all the time. So I don’t disbelieve in them.

Ronald Hutton: Living alongside an old battlefield is often a very uncomfortable experience. Especially as this battle, in English terms, wasn’t that long ago. It was a particularly bloody battle. Horrible things happened there. Whole regiments were wiped out on the spot. And somehow or other that whole landscape is rich with thousands of human bones. Unreclaimed, lost bones, wandering souls. And so it’s not surprising that whether or not there’s objective truth in paranormal phenomena, people in that area will see and hear things at night. The Moor is a tainted place and has a ghastly reputation. It’s a graveyard of unquiet dead of those who died screaming, those who never wanted to die in that place. And above all those who died three hundred or more years ago, without Christian burial, with no prayers said over them to help them – which was a great comfort to people in that age. Not only did they die in horrible agony, many of them, but they died in the spiritual agony from knowing that nobody was going to whisper a few things to help God take them. Their chance of going to heaven was dramatically reduced.

Narrator: Similar sightings continue to the present day, often seen by people who have absolutely no knowledge of the battle or its location. One man for example, an Italian, has very little knowledge of English history. But one night he was returning home on his motor bike when he narrowly missed two figures limping along the edge of the road known as Bloody Lane. His name is Pierro Prizzi.

Pierro, Local Resident: One night when I finished work I was coming back to York with the motorbicycle. When I arrive on the bend of this road just about 50 yards up from here, is two people they was standing in the middle of the road. At the time I thought it was two people dressed like a party dress. At the time I thought it was two drunks, you know, just finished the party and was going home. To try to avoid them I scrape all on the footpath, and I just managed to stand up, I nearly crashed. And I’m stopping there. And when I turned there was nobody standing. But I think it was the shock of the thing, I got this imprinted to me, the two people in my brain. It was a light like a floodlight from a theatre. It was the two people, the light it was inwards. But a very very brilliant light. It was the colour, I was able to distinguish the colour of everything. One person he was hanging to another person more or less. One he was standing, the other one he was hanging [indicates perhaps an arm on the other’s shoulder]. He was with the 17^th century boots, the trousers was 17^th century. It was blue, very very dark blue trousers, with this white shirt all hanging out. And the other one he was standing and looking towards… it was just a house in front of him but he was looking like that [hand to brow] very very intense like if he was seeing something. He was looking towards Marston.

Narrator: For people to see and hear the events that took place on a battlefield many years earlier is by no means an uncommon claim. There are stories of such happenings from all over the world and from all ages. In America for example, the sites of many of the bloodiest battles of the civil war. The battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia is one such place, where Sheridan’s army inflicted a major defeat on the confederate forces, when all seemed lost. Strangely similar, indeed, to Marston Moor. Many visitors claim to have heard the  sounds of the battle: bugles, the shouts and screams of men, the firing of muskets and canon coming from nowhere around them as they stood in the sunlight where the soldiers fought. Indeed hearing the sounds is a remarkably common report. There are extraordinary stories from various modern battlefields – Dieppe, for example, Corregidor. And some people claim the sounds of the muskets, even the high emotions of the battle still hang over these farmers fields from 350 years ago.

Vanessa, Local Resident: Well I don’t walk on the Moor any more. I really can’t bear the depressive feeling, erm, it’s a very tense feeling. I feel as if I can’t get off of the moor. I can’t get back up to the road. Um. It’s a very heavy feeling. It’s a feeling of, um, of great disaster. Which obviously it was, but it’s very oppressive. And I certainly cannot go any further down the moor than the original musketeer ditch line. I can’t go past that. It’s, it’s frightening.

Narrator: Many people in the Marston area claim to have seen the soldiers from the 17^th century – rarely in groups, sometimes a horseman, most frequently one or two men together, one perhaps supporting the other. They seem them not as wraithlike figures but as solid bodies moving along the lanes beside the old battlefield.

Jon, Local Resident: I’ve been at my brother’s house at Long Marston, which is just up that way. And I was cycling back about midnight, I got somewhere near the monument and something caught my eye that was over here on the ridge. And I didn’t look at first, I carried on cycling for a bit. And then I stopped, because it was in my head you know, that I’d seen something that seemed odd. So I looked up to the ridge, and somewhere round about there I saw someone riding a horse, or walking a horse, you know, sat on the horse. And, er, I looked and I thought – god what’s somebody doing out this time of night on a horse? And then I sort of realised it wasn’t somebody sat on a horse riding, it was something else, and I don’t know – I didn’t know what I thought at the time. I was like mouth open, you know, staring at it! It was a moonlit night, and it was clear. I could see it but it wasn’t like – you know if you saw a person on a horse in moonlight it would be very distinct, casting a shadow. But it didn’t look like that. It was sort of dull and faded. Erm… I looked at it for about a minute, a minute and a half, and, I just decided that was it, I’d seen enough! Jumped on my push bike and cycled off as quick as I could. Um, I kept it pretty much to myself. I told my mum. She was quite interested in it. I didn’t tell anybody else. I didn’t think… it was one of those things where if you go in the pub and say ‘oh I saw a ghost last night’ – the whole pub’s rolling round laughing. So, er, I didn’t say anything. But it sticks in my head as clear as if it were yesterday, as if I’d seen it last night.

Vanessa: I was walking along one evening, watching the sun setting over there, and noticed some people walking along the top ridge of the field towards Cromwell’s Clump. Then all of a sudden I saw a horse and rider come galloping over the ridge, and diagonally down the field. And it was a dark horse, the rider on it was dressed in a sort-of terracotta plantpot-coloured outfit. Any more description than that I really didn’t see. But it was moving at some rate and it would have, it seemed to me that it was going to collide with the people walking up to the ridge. Anyhow, the horse galloped diagonally across the field to where there was a hedge. I didn’t know where the horse was going to go, but as it reached the hedge it actually just dispersed. It was just like a , a ball of dust dispersing. And it was just an amazing… there was an amazing feeling. I knew that there was something wrong, and went back to the monument and waited for the two people who were walking across the top to come back to the monument and asked them if they’d seen this horse, because it had gone straight past them. And they said no, there’d been no horse, no rider. They’d seen nothing. And it was then that I realised that I’d seen something that had no explanation.

Sue: Well I have a friend who works in Wetherby and I see her quite regularly and we happened to be talking one day about Marston Moor, and she sort of questioned me. And I said – well why the interest? She says, well we were driving back late one night across the moor, and erm, she says ‘I saw somebody crouching in the ditch. I thought he had fancy dress on. And I pointed him out to my husband, who couldn’t see it. And I said, well he’s there! And he said ‘He’s not there!’ I said ‘He is, look!’ She said By that time we were past, and she said ‘I never thought any more of it, I just thought it was my imagination, until we started talking about this.’ I said well it was possibly an apparition, because at the end of the battle or towards the end of the battle, a lot of the soldiers both Cavaliers and Roundheads, hid in ditches and bushes all around, trying to escape the troops afterwards. So I said, it’s a possibility it could be an apparition from there hiding from the hedge bottom. He might have been killed there.

Jim, Local Resident: October 73, middle evening time I was sitting in the house. There was the dog and myself. The dog started growling and sort of whimpering, which was a bit unusual for him, because if there was anybody around or cars pulling up he used to bark noisily. So I came to the back door which was (before this was rebuilt) just over there. And I looked across the Moor. Somebody was leaning on the gate. So I walked round the drive and started approaching this gate. This one’s been replaced but it was in the same sort of position. Somebody leaning on it like this. It just disappeared in front of me, and I felt very uneasy. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I went back into the house and got a torch and had a good look around up and down the road, in the side field, and couldn’t see anybody around. And um, the strange thing was that the dog who would usually be sort of out and run off, if there was anybody visited he’d be straight to them, jumping up and barking – he’d disappeared back into the house and was behind a chair whimpering and his hackles were up.

Narrator: So what is happening in these extraordinary sightings? Soldiers seen limping from a battlefield 350 years after they’ve died. Can they all be dismissed as hallucinations, seen as they are by different people at quite different times? Hallucinations in any case is simply a vague and slippery word used to describe something we can’t explain. Do we have here yet another example, where some people believe moments of powerful emotion, the anguish of violent death are trapped in the rocks and stones to be replayed at some later time for those who are keen enough to hear.

Archie Roy, Prof. of Astronomy: To make sense of it we have to step outside the materialist reductionalist idea of what a human being is. Of very complicated electrochemical physical mechanism, with the mind and the personality seated in the brain’s operations. And that when the brain dies and is destroyed, then that is the end of it. If those cases of apparitions, of information given that was not in any person, any living person’s mind – are authentic, then it would appear that there is a part of a human being that can operate independent of time and space. I’m sure of that. And may even be able to operate independent of mortality.

Dr. Peter Fenwick, Consultant Neuro-Psychiatrist: The question of survival of mind after death is one of the oldest problems that we have. I think that if you’re going to enquire into that, a very good model to look at is the near death experiences. And we’ve looked at a large number of near death experiences. I’ve had over 2000 experiences given to our unit. And if you look at these there’s a common feature. And the common features are as follows – when the brain is so disrupted that it can’t support consciousness, consciousness can occur. So that is a really difficult problem for science. The second question is that these people report subjectively a continuation of consciousness in such a way, and with such similarity between all the accounts, as to lead one to believe that that might be exactly what’s happening. So the hypothesis that there is a potentiation of consciousness after brain death, I think is on the scientific table, and I think we just have to accept that.

David Fontana, Prof. of Psychology: Psychologists generally and neurosurgeons, are very intrigued with the idea is the mind the brain, is the mind just the workings of the brain. Or is the mind working through the brain – that is, is the mind non-physical, and normally works through the brain rather like a driver works through a car. And you can’t find the mind in the brain any more than you can find the driver in the engine of the car. At the moment in terms of the kind of evidence that we have, it’s impossible to decide one way or the other.  Now if you like to take the view, as some people do, that the mind is separate from the brain and usually operates through the brain, you could say that when the brain dies the mind survives, and it is that which is actually operating here.

Narrator: An important point that is often overlooked when the paranormal is concerned is that it doesn’t take a whole battalion, so to speak, of paranormal happenings, to challenge and put in question the received wisdom. If just one of these happenings is established or authenticated it challenges our view of what survives a human being after his worldly death.

Archie Roy: If we accept that even a small fraction of these cases that have been investigated and accepted as authentic by societies such as the Society for Psychical Research, are actually true, that these things actually happened, then they must tell us something about human nature, about human personality. When you do investigations you find that a lot of people have those experiences, and as I say, even if only a percentage of them are telling the truth, then they mean something.

Narrator: Professor Archie Roy is by no means alone in believing we’ve gone well beyond the time of asking ‘if’ these events are happening. Science, he argues, must now move on to grapple with the implications of their occurrence.

Archie Roy: You’ve got to start saying ‘supposing this is true, what does it mean’. And I think we have come to the stage – oh, quite a few years ago, with respect to psychic phenomena. We have to say, supposing the findings of various branches of psychical research are true, what does it mean for human personality? And I think we have to take that leap. We have to try desperately to give reliable theories of process. Now they’re the only things that will give us fresh observations to make, and the only things that will persuade people to take the subject seriously.

Ghost Hunters: The Man Who Talks To Ghosts

I don't really know what to make of Eddie Burks, as I've said before. It makes no sense to me and my prejudices to believe that there can be spirits you can interrogate and then encourage to 'move on'. But yet, he seems to believe very much in what he is doing. We're not really given any particularly interesting anecdotes from the people at the church centre. It looks pretty grim for sure. But that doesn't mean its miserable atmosphere = haunted, surely. Is it relevant that the place is a 'church centre' and full of people slightly more inclined to be thinking about Spiritual Matters? One wonders.

 

Eddie Burks: I’m experiencing pain across the forehead, and at the base of the neck. Well a discomfort at the base of the neck. It’s got something to do with his death, I think. If I can encourage him to… go back into that remembrance, we shall make progress with him. [Deep breathing] He was walking along the path and saw the two men, and realise that this was dangerous, and something was about to happen. And he turned, and there were two others on the path blocking his… his retreat. This could have been a murder. [Rubs face]

Narrator: This is Eddie Burks, a psychic medium, claiming to be in contact with the ghost of a young man. The common stereotype is that ghosts and hauntings and all that stuff have to do with old and historic locations – graveyards and ruined castles, old abbeys and the like. Nothing could be further from the truth. In our searches across the country it’s clear that the paranormal knows no boundaries. You are as likely to bump into it in an urban semi as you are in a ruined castle. That is also true of the work of psychic mediums – the men that talk to ghosts. They find themselves called in by all sorts of ordinary people, most of whom don’t have the slightest interest or belief in the paranormal. People who need help in dealing with psychic events they’re no longer able to bear. In this programme we tell just such a story, that could easily have happened in a street near you. This is a local church centre in suburban south London. It’s heavily protected against local vandals. But they run all sorts of social events here. It’s all very normal and everyday. And yet for the past five or six years here,  things haven’t been quite right. Nothing very specific, just a strange sense of dread and foreboding. The centre is run by Caroline. She didn’t want herself or the centre to be identified. Indeed she was very reluctant to let us film at all here.

Caroline: If you’re sitting in the office you actually get um, coldness around your neck or around your legs. And just generally everyone will say they’ve felt cold or uneasy here today. Things like that. The experience I’ve had ongoing downstairs when I’ve had to go to the boiler room was, immediately as I approached the doors from the upstairs, my stomach actually was churning, turning over, and I was very fearful to actually go downstairs.

Narrator: But Caroline is by no means alone. Over the past few years many people using the centre have experienced inexplicable and strange happenings. But above all, they’ve experienced a strong sense of dread and fear in the basement of the building. The feelings got so bad that they decided to call in some professional ghost hunters.

Anne Spencer, Paranormal Investigator: On the first vigil I was spending in the building, I spent quite a few hours in the bar area. While we were sitting there, I was with my husband, it was quiet, and occasionally I could hear some tapping on the pipes. Well this could have been tapping, someone tapping, so I tried knocking on the pipes to get an answer, nothing came. Um, we later confirmed that no-one was tapping on the pipes at the time. Everyone was being watched by someone. The noises still came, and while we were listening there were two incredibly large bangs from a cupboard right behind me.

John Spencer, Paranormal Investigator: We’ve done three vigils here now, and on each occasion we’ve had some kind of results, particularly sound and light effects. I’ve been present at two of those where we’ve witnessed something where we really are quite curious about – we wouldn’t put too much of a label on them yet, but certainly the investigation hasn’t come up with a good answer for them.

Narrator: But despite all this effort there were no very conclusive or specific results.

Chris Walton, Paranormal Researcher: Three of us settled down for the evening, to see what was going to happen. And we were hearing the occasional noise, the occasional rustling noise towards the end of the gym here. And there was light, seeing the odd light effect. Although you can never rule that out as being caused by the eye, caused by the retina. So we weren’t sure about those. And then after a while we had a build up of the atmosphere – it was almost like being in a thunderstorm. It was just an intense pressure, a very uncomfortable feeling. And then we started to see lights, I started to see lights towards the centre of the room, round about this area here. And the lights coming out from the area, and it started to move towards us. At which point we all shouted ‘now!’ and in true ghostbuster fashion, rushed it.

John Spencer: And it was a very strange experience, and I’m not partic… I’ve never credited myself with being psychic and I’ve had very few experiences of that nature –  but certainly my notes will agree with almost everybody else’s in that place, that something had happened.

Narrator: When we heard Caroline’s story, we decided to call in one of this country’s most celebrated ghost hunters – the psychic medium Eddie Burks. A shy, diffident, softly-spoken man who has an international reputation for the quality of his psychic perceptions. We told him nothing about where he was going or what had happened at the centre. When he arrived at the centre, Eddie spent the first half hour or so just walking through all the rooms. During this time he did indeed get an idea of something dark and mysterious in the basement. But it was not for him the main focus of unrest or unease in the centre.

Eddie Burks: Before I came down I was picking up a lot of distress on the floor above, which we may have to return to. I don’t much like the feeling of it down here but I don’t think it’s… it’s the same sort of distress I was picking up upstairs. As far as I’m concerned the centre of the disturbance – although it may not manifest here – the centre is in this room. [He’s now sat down, breathing loudly] I’m making contact with somebody, a man, he’s saying ‘what do these other people want?’ What do they want. It seems he wants to make contact with me… however, that’ll be alright. I’ll reassure him. I want to find out more about him… How he died and why he’s still here… He’s wearing dark trousers, flared, bell-bottom type trousers. I suppose that places him in the 1950s, I’m not sure. If so, I think it would be, no – I can’t be sure of the date at the moment… He’s not very happy at remembering the circumstances of his death, and I think it’ll be a while before I can persuade him to do that… Try and get some feeling of his character. Can’t see him yet… A youngish man, I feel. Died suddenly... Severe blow to the back of the head [he rubs his neck]… This could have been a murder.

Narrator: During the past five years, as the various investigations have gone on at the community centre, the possibility of the disturbing events there being linked in some way to a murder has come up several times.

Caroline: We’ve tried to look into the history. But unfortunately we can’t really find very much out about the centre. We’re aware it might have been used as a mortuary in the war, so I’m not sure if it’s someone who’s not been able to pass on to where they’re going. Um, we have done a Ouija board here, and it came up that it was a young man who died here in 1977.

Narrator: The local community policeman, Paul, was informed about the paranormal investigations, and he was able to search through the records of local events.

Paul, Community Policeman:  They had a séance here during one of the ghost watches, and the ghost passed information that he’d been murdered nearby in April of 1977. I wasn’t too happy with this but I thought I’d check it out anyway. I went to the local library and through their archives I found out a murder had occurred in this area, less than a quarter of a mile from where we stand.

Anne Spencer: Well, it’s often thought that a strong emotion will create a recording of a ghost which can then be replayed in some way later. Now there were murders taking place very near here, and of course if the theory is right there will be ghosts created at that time. Whether they’ve moved into the centre is still to be found out really.

Narrator:  But Eddie Burks knew nothing of all this. The remarkable sequence that follows took place over a period of three hours in front of our cameras, as Eddie slowly pieced together the anatomy of a murder: the people, the place, the actual experience of the young man who he believes was attacked and brutally killed.

Eddie Burks: Agitation is increasing considerably. I think we’re awakening his recollections… Ah, I just saw, um, railings, like park railings… and a path. I think this took place… in a park setting, or something like a park setting, I can only see railings running one way and at right angles, and a path. … I’m getting very strong impressions of the struggle that took place between him and these two men…  This is, I think drug related… I think they thought he was carrying drugs… and the fight started because they demanded drugs and he denied that he was carrying any… Oof. Very nasty. Very nasty feelings about this altogether… I was getting the words ‘You’ve got it all wrong, you’ve got it all wrong’ and I thought it was referring to what I was doing, but I don’t.. .I think this is what he was saying to his assailants – you’ve got it all wrong, you’ve got it all wrong. Because these words keep coming through very forcibly. You’ve got it all wrong… I think there were more than these two men involved. He was walking along the path, and saw the two men and realised this was dangerous and something was about to happen. And then he turned, and there were two others on the path blocking his retreat… [Holds head in hand] I think… they got him on the ground once and he was wrestling with them, and I was seeing this wrestling going on and then I think he got up, and was still engaged with one man, wrestling with him, struggling with him. And then he got the blow at the back of the head and fell.

Narrator: Once he is in contact with the disturbed spirit, in this case the spirit of a young man, Eddie sees his role as finding out the cause of his disturbance. Or as Eddie would put it, why he refuses to pass over into the spirit world.

Eddie Burks: I think a factor in the difficulty we’re having, or I’m having with this man, is again that he… he’s very angry at what happened, he naturally bears a sense of… I think he wants, he would like to avenge himself on these people. As long as he carries that strongly with him, it’s going to be difficult to… to free him. I’ve mentally put the proposition to him, would he like to go on a journey. Erm, out of this place that he’s in. And er, I’m waiting to see what he thinks…

Narrator: Eddie has now come to what he sees as the most important part of his work – actually reasoning with the spirit to persuade him or it to move on, away from the focus of his anger and desire for revenge. For him it is a process of cleansing and exorcism.

Eddie Burks: I see a brook… and a bridge across.. and this has suddenly come into view and I think he can see it as well. And if he steps across this bridge it will be symbolic of him leaving this place – well more than symbolic, it will mark his leaving this place and going on this journey. He will not be able to come back. But that’s ok, I don’t think he’ll ever want to. So it’s now up to him to make that step, it’s got to be his choice to leave… he says now he feels there’s nothing to hold him here… but he says ‘I want to do something about those men, the ones who killed me’ – well he can’t do anything about it where he is now, and he may have a different view if he starts on this journey. In time… But he says ‘thanks mate’ to me, ‘I will go’… [He rubs his forehead]…  he has gone across the bridge… I’ve got to come out of it now. Um, I’ve done all I can do and I think all that was necessary at this stage… Oh, I can’t, I’ve probably exhausted my own resources on this one. I’ll have to leave it. Anyway the job is done.

Narrator:  At the end of his three hour encounter Eddie Burks was completely exhausted. It was as if he’d actually lived through a series of violent events. When he’d rested we asked him how he felt about the spirits with whom he’d established contact. He gave an extraordinary answer – for him, ghosts are just people.

Eddie Burks: The reason for this sort of phenomena occurring, as I say, banging on radiators, fiddling  about, making things disappear and so on- is partly, I think, frustration at the situation they find themselves in. It’s partly erm, to make their plight known. It depends on the personality of the one doing the haunting. After all these are people, we call them ghosts but they are in fact people in a displaced sort of condition. But they remain people with the same personalities as they had before. And if they had a mischievous disposition, they will behave mischievously. If they’re frustrated they’ll show their frustration, if they’re angry they’ll show that they are angry. What you sometimes find is that the haunting will start off fairly placidly and harmlessly, and after a time it begins to get more and more troublesome. And this is understandable because the spirit concerned is getting more exasperated that nobody is doing anything for him. But I probably made contact with that man because he was the most needful. And I think if I came back again I would be able to deal with perhaps one or two others. The place certainly needs some sort of clearing out.