Ghost Hunters: Echoes from Beyond the Grave

I don't know about all this. Chrissie makes ghosts sound like spiders (they're more afraid of you than you are of them). Her whole encounter could be in her imagination. Peter Bowers was pulled in for the Phantom Fisherman episode and I can't say as I was particularly impressed then. This time it wouldn't take much for Peter to assume the ghost was a biker, it's not like the pub wasn't famous for them and they do have a habit of dying young. Landlady Sue seems to me the most level-headed witness and she definitely experienced a phantom biker carrying his helmet, and I like her story a lot. She would have told the details to Chrissie though, one imagines. And thus Chrissie had something on which to pin her own tale. Also with Sue, I really liked the way she wanted to call out and ask poor Biker Ghost whether he truly wanted to be moved up the escalator during Peter's 'release process'. Quite right, why do all these psychics feel obliged to move everyone one? It seems quite egotistical. The process sounded very daft on the video, with Peter summoning the Biker Ghost over in a soppy little voice as though he were a dog. One wonders if the weird goings-on ceased.

(And as for Colin Wilson, philosopher my eye. 'Certainly Ancient Egyptian priests could see spirits wandering around'. And his stuff about people in Patagonia and the North Pole having similar beliefs... er no. They live in entirely different environments. It makes a difference you know. He's just Rent-A-Remark unfortunately.)

Chrissie: If you know anything about the other side, you have to imagine there’s like a glass wall. When they bump into you it’s just as scary for them to see somebody living as it is for us to see somebody from the other side. Or catch a glimpse of them.

Narrator: Cockington is a small village that lies between the southern slopes of Dartmoor and the sea in southern England. It’s surrounded by lush green pastures and it has an almost picture postcard beauty with its neat rows of whitewashed cottages with their clipped thatched roofs and its narrow winding streets. At its centre lies the village green and an ancient coaching inn. The Drum Inn has a long history but in more recent times had a reputation as a haunt for bikers. In the 60s and 70s motorcyclists gathered here from all over southern England.

Larry, Landlord: Going back about 15 years ago, the Drum Inn was well known in the area as being a bikers’ pub. It was a gradual thing that had occurred over a period of time. But in the mid 70s you couldn’t come anywhere near Cockington without seeing swarms of motorcycles. The problem then was a commercial thing, that it was putting off other types of visitors to the area and to the pub in particular. Families would drive up to the pub and see hoards of motorcycles parked outside.

Narrator: What is less well known,  in fact it’s known only to a small group of people, is that the inn also has a ghost. The ghost or apparition, it seems, of a motorcyclist dressed in full leather gear. He has been experienced at various times over the last 5 or 6 years, in particular by the three or four people who live and work here.

Chris, Barman: Er it was late one night. Normally I can run up and down to the cellar absolutely no problem whatsoever. We had just closed and I was doing all my normal cellar work that I had to do, and as I went down into the cellar, I carried on down, as I hit the actual cellar floor I came over with an immense sense of chill and cold. And I could hardly move. It was quite frightening at the time looking back on it, I mean it doesn’t affect me now. But it just happened this once where you know, this er, presence, made itself known.

Larry: Quite often when I’m working alone in the cellar I catch things out of the corner of my eye, I look round expecting people to be standing behind me, and er hearing things that I really can’t explain.

Sue, Landlady: Within the first year of us living here I noticed - there was always somebody behind me, or a movement out the corner of my eye. I could never quite understand what it was. And one winter’s evening I was working in the kitchens, and somebody came in through the door. And my dog, who’s a guard dog, would usually bark very loudly, or if it was a member of staff would wag her tail and be very excited. And this evening she just didn’t move, she didn’t stir. And this person walked down in leather biker gear, and with a helmet and everything like that, and I couldn’t work out who he was. And he was taking his gloves off and he turned to walk down where you hang your coats up. At this time of year all the back doors are locked, obviously, for security. And as I walked to meet him he totally vanished and disappeared. And I just couldn’t understand what it was. But I saw it so clearly. And even to this day I know exactly what I saw and how I saw it.

Narrator: Until a couple of years ago, that was as far as it went. Then a pop group from Plymouth was invited to play at the inn. The lead singer was a young woman called Chrissie. She had a rather unusual background – she’d been brought up as a gypsy and she would describe herself as a ‘sensitive’. At one point in the evening the entire group was invited down into the cellar.

Chrissie, Singer: I think we were just sitting around being sociable, and something was said to the landlady about the history behind the pub, and I think that initiated something along the lines of A Mysterious Happening , or something had been felt, a presence of some sort. I think she was quite interested to see whether I could actually bring, pick anything up. I think in the heat of the excitement everybody trundled down to the cellar, to sort of see if they could feel or see something. I don’t know what their expectations were, whether they were expected to see this floating sheet above them going ‘whooo!’ But um, they seemed – it very quickly calmed down. The minute they got down there they realised that something wasn’t going to materialise, it wasn’t something quite as clear cut as people imagine. And at that point I said ‘Would you mind leaving me on my own?’ – so they did.

Narrator: Within a few minutes of the others leaving Chrissie began an encounter with a spirit or n entity, call it what you will, which if you accept it at face value takes us into a different world. It seems to give a most extraordinary view of what is often called The Other Side.

Chrissie: Right in the corner of that cellar is a, like a, it looks like a huge cupboard. And the minute the air cleared, he just walked out and said hello. And we just immediately got into conversation with each other. I didn’t ask him the, the sort of questions that people would automatically think of asking, like how did you die, how long have you been dead. It was like, it’s like talking to somebody else who’s living, but acknowledging that there are some personal questions that you don’t ask. He was about five, about five nine or ten, medium build, quite long legs. And completely dressed in leather with large boots. And he held his helmet the whole time, his crash helmet under his arm. It never moved from his body, it was almost like it was attached to him. Obviously everything was black. I don’t actually remember much about his facial features because I couldn’t really see him that well in the light. He spoke with a sort of local accent. But again it’s hard to actually remember exactly what his dialect was.

Narrator: Chrissie claims that she had what amounts to a conversation with the young motorcyclist, in which described his ongoing life or existence or being - it’s difficult to know what word to use. Almost as if there had been no interruption, no discontinuity. She claims for example, that he described how he still spends hours polishing and cleaning his bike, even chatting to his mates.

Chrissie: It was his private place, he liked to be there. Er, he spent time with his friends. It was good happy times, peaceful times. Er, cleaning his bike, sitting talking. Just having time out I think, from the everyday burdens that all of us face whether it’s work or other commitments. And yet he wanted to make sure that I knew it was his private domain. He didn’t want that interrupted at all. And that he was quite shy, and very apologetic at the hint of upsetting anybody or causing any anxiety. I think what was so noticeable about him was that as a biker he was really quite shy and reserved. So it seems obvious to me that it was a great effort for him to come out and speak to me. I think he must have heard everybody trundle down to the cellar.

Narrator: In her quite extraordinary account Chrissie creates a picture that has echoes  of ancient civilisations in Egypt and China, for example, where people were buried with their possessions, and their musical instruments and so on, to continue their life on the other side. She claims for example, to have talked with the ghostly biker even about the music he still listened to.

Chrissie: The music he referred to was very much the music of the 70s – the Born To Be Wild stuff. And anything that was to do with the masculinity of riding a bike. Because he was a shy type he didn’t seem that keen on the really aggressive rock. I think he just enjoyed the 70s stuff really. I think with bikers their own language is through their clothes and the machine they ride, and the language of music, so that’s quite significant. I felt that the time he gave me was very precious anyway and I didn’t feel it was right to keep him.

Narrator: The extraordinary encounter in the basement of the village inn between the musician and the biker’s ghost contains such extraordinary detail that we decided to call in an internationally known psychic medium to see if he could make contact, and if so would the accounts match up. We gave him no information other than the fact there had been a number of sightings. When he arrived at the inn, Peter the medium spent some time exploring the house. Then he sat down in a particular corner – a corner as it happened where several strange experiences had taken place. Then almost immediately he began to hold what can only be described as a conversation with someone or something unseen. But the similarities to Chrissie’s description were quite remarkable.

Peter Bowers, Psychic Medium:  I’ve got a young man, he’s in his early 20s, perhaps heading up to 25 – 23, 25, something like that. He feels as though he’s slim quite slim, and a bit taller than me, so that makes him what – six foot one, something like that. He’s got a motorbike helmet which he’s taken off, and his hair, his hair comes down to about here on his neck, it’s darker hair much darker than mine, towards the black. He had an accident about three or four miles away from here. But the reason that he is in here is because this is the local place where he used to come to. This is where his friends were. He feels at home here. And he’s made me sit in his seat , because this is where he prefers to be. The message that I’m getting is that he in fact, just before he died there seems to have been some sort of emotional upset with a young lady, which caused him a great deal of grief and anxiety. And led to him, not directly but indirectly, to him actually having the accident that killed him. It was an accident that killed him, it wasn’t a deliberate thing. There’s a great deal of sorrow building up around him. A great deal of sadness inside him. And the feeling is he’s been wandering about here for a long long time. He’s trying to go over, but he’s just wanting to say he’s sorry. Now he’s talking about people because he’s frightened quite a few people. By his sudden appearances. And what he’s saying is that every so often the emotion, the feeling and the emotion around him gets so strong that he just materialises to other people. He’s not materialising to me in that sense at the moment, but no doubt other people will have seen him in a solid form. And this is when he’s either attracted to somebody because of the sympathy they would send out to him, or else the pain that he’s suffering at that precise point is too much. Now he doesn’t do this very often – he’s talking about six appearances he’s made to various people over the last 4 or 5 years especially, especially over the last four or five years. So he’s gradually been building up to a stage where he’s asking to be released. And to get away from it all.

Narrator: Peter felt compelled to take some action, to respond to the appeal he claimed to have received. We followed him down to the cellar, to a spot close in fact to where Chrissie claimed to have had her encounter. He began to go through what he described as a release process.

Peter: I would ask those who are with me just to be still for a moment and think of him as a person who’s been lost for many years between these worlds, and who’s now taking a big step in his life. Because he’s going to be free for the first time in a long time. So what we do is we create an energy into which he can move. [He swirls the air with his hand] Come on sunshine, where are you. Ok. It’s all right. Come on. Towards me. You’re ok. Ok come on, you’re all right. There’s nothing to bother about. You can do it. Just walk into the light. Ok. He’s moving forward now towards me. He’s actually standing in front of me now. Ok it’s all right. Just bring yourself forward. That’s it. Just step into the light. That’s it. Ok, you’re in. We ask the Divine Living Father, that this your servant be received into the light, Amen. Ok. Thank you.

Narrator: Peter took with him down to the cellar a number of people whom he said were needed to absorb some of the emotional energy of the parting. When we spoke to them immediately afterwards they clearly had experienced a powerful emotional connection.

Sue: Just before Peter was releasing him, I felt I wanted to shout to him, to call him, to make sure this is the right thing that we were doing, that this was really what he wanted. I had to really hold myself back from calling his name, not that I really know it, but I just felt I needed to shout, to yell at him, to say is this right, is this what you want? Then once Peter had said that was it, he had gone – and it all happened so very quickly – which surprised me, I thought it was something that would take a while – I felt I wanted him to say, to show us something that he was fine and he was safe. I still feel a little bit like that. I felt calmer. While it was going on I felt very tingly, my arms were aching, I felt very strange. I can’t explain. Like having a very mild electrical sensation up my arms. That’s still there slightly, but it’s gone. But I feel, it’s like a sad, - it’s not sad. I can’t explain, I just feel very strange.

Narrator: One has to ask, how much of this is pure theatre, pure hokum. Most scientists would say just about all of it. But is that the whole picture, if there’s nothing here of what science is best at – nothing to measure, nothing to weigh, nothing to run controlled tests on. We’re into a different world. A world that has a high emotional or spiritual dimension. Certainly a world where science has never been very comfortable. And the same is undoubtedly true of Peter’s explanation of what was going on.

Peter: Basically he’s some sort of energy form. He hasn’t got a body the same as you and I but he’s got an energy form. Now his energy form rightly shouldn’t be on the earth. And people ask me this question and I say well you’ve seen relatives die, and you can go and look at a body a few hours after death and you’ll say ‘there’s nothing there’ – whatever it is, that spark has gone. In the normal course of events people will move from one vibration, from one place to another. I mean religiously it might be called Heaven. But if you think of it in terms of energy instead of religion, the scientific method, they’ve moved one vibration to another and they’re away. Now if a person goes from this world unprepared, and not prepared to go, then they can, through no fault of their own really, find themselves in some sort of inbetween world of existence. The nearest that I could describe it is like walking through a foggy room. And that you are not where you feel you rightly belong, either here or on the earth, because you can’t communicate with anybody. Except occasionally in this case when this young man manifested to people on odd occasions. So he did have some form of communication with certain people. But neither was he with those who have also passed over, previously. So he’s in between the two. I mean the nearest is being stuck on an escalator between floors.

Narrator: That kind of an explanation is not unique. It’s one that’s been expressed by psychic mediums for over a hundred years, longer. And the fundamental problem of course is that we’re out at the very edge of the credible, well beyond the bounds of conventional scientific analysis. That’s very frustrating of course, particularly if you are of a scientific bent, and like nice neat equations. But, we have to ask, does that make it any less real?

Colin Wilson, Philosopher: Anthropologists were very much struck by the fact that the basic spiritual beliefs of people who could not have had any cultural contact, you know people living in Patagonia and people living at the north pole, did appear to have identical spiritual beliefs, and these spiritual beliefs always involved the notion that it is possible for spirits not to know that they’re dead, and for spirits to be able to get trapped into a kind of limbo from which they need to be released, if possible, by the actions of the living. So this seems to be a general belief of all people all over the world, and I would take it that it’s true.

Dr John Beloff, Psychologist: My own philosophy is rather dualistic, I think there are one set of laws for the mind and another set for matter, and er, and that what science knows to a very advanced degree are the laws that govern the behaviour of matter, and perhaps the laws that govern the behaviour even of the brain. But over and above all that I believe that mind is a power in the universe and that mind can achieve things that are simply not allowed for in the accepted scientific scheme, which is basically a physicalistic picture of reality.

Bernard Carr, Professor of Astrophysics: If you’re a physicist you tend to think of the real world as the three dimensions of space, one dimension of time. The four dimensional world of Einstein – that’s what we tend to think of as reality. So you say something is real because it exists in that four dimensional world. Four dimensional space-time. But my own view is that we cannot be completely sure that that’s what reality consists of exclusively. One has to bear in mind the possibility that there could be a higher level of reality, of which what we call the physical world is just a part. So that even if something isn’t real in that four dimensional spacetime of physics, conceivably there might be this higher world with respect to which it might have reality.

Colin Wilson: If we could get back to this state of mind that was probably absolutely taken for granted at the time in Ancient Egypt when they built the pyramids, say 2500bc, we would find this whole question of the paranormal self evidenced and obvious. There wouldn’t be any question about it. Because they didn’t see any distinction between this world and the next.  And I’m sure they were perfectly right, I’m sure they could actually see spirits wandering around. Certainly their priests could. Now we’ve deliberately supressed that faculty because it’s useless to us. It would distract us, and would certainly distract us from building the type of civilisation we’ve got. Therefore it’s extremely important that we don’t start getting it back!

Narrator: It has to be said that nothing about the events at the Drum Inn can be described as proven in the scientific sense. But then our minds are difficult to identify, yet we’re all quite sure we have one. There’s clearly much more to this world than is dreamt of in the purely scientific philosophy. The 64 thousand dollar question is clearly, how much more. It would seem that Chrissie’s encounter lies in that grey area. The conversation she claims to have had with a young man who died all those years ago would seem to raise the most profound questions about what happens after death.

Ghost Hunters: The Phantom Fisherman

This episode really doesn't strike me as being terribly convincing. So some people smell a strong fishy smell in a house. A so-called medium comes in and tells John all sorts of stuff about a dead man who's leaving the smell. He uses the name James Goldsworthy and tells him a date and that he's buried in a church. He goes to the records office to find that a James Goldsworthy is actually buried at the church down the road. So why should we not assume that the medium went to the office in advance too? And anyway, how common is 'Goldsworthy' in Plymouth? James can't be very rare. Perhaps if you check 50 years of parish records you'd turn one up. Peter hasn't specified the church other than it's old, on a hill, and over looks water (which could apply to a lot of places).

The first paragraph from the narrator is utter speculation (and doesn't even sound right - the map seems to show an orchard, not scrubland). 

I found it quite funny that James Goldsworthy's wife had left him (according to Peter) and there's poor John also estranged from his family, as though Peter had cynically echoed the two men's stories. 

The thing is, John hasn't given the afterlife much thought. He "believes in god, obviously, I mean most people do". And now he's being chucked in with a woman who invites 'spirits' to sit down on the sofa, and Peter the medium. It's no wonder he feels his life's been turned upside down. It's no wonder he leaps to paranormal conclusions when everyone else round him is happy to accept them.

The coincidence with one of his driving school pupils being called James Goldsworthy is quite good. But it's hard to see where that might fit in.


But ultimately I think he should check the drains and under the fridge. Maybe there is a ghostly fisherman pushing his barrow through the house every night at teatime. But I would check the obvious first.

Narrator: Close to the centre of the ancient fishing port of Plymouth lies the old church of Stoke Damerel. It stands on the crest of the hill overlooking a narrow valley. It dates back several hundred years. It lies at the centre of a remarkable story that links the distant past with the immediate present. The story we tell is of an old fisherman who was attacked and robbed close to this church, way back in the middle of the 18^th century. And how that event has touched the lives of people here and now in the 1990s. The story revolves around two key figures. One of them is John, a driving instructor, in his mid-30s, divorced with three children, he now lives on his own. He had no experience of or interest in the paranormal, but he was swept up in a string of events that started last April. Peter is quite different. He is an extraordinary and mysterious figure. He claims not only to be able to communicate with the dead, but to obtain from them remarkable insights into the past and even into the future. The story that unfolded tested those claims to the very limit, and we have to say in no way disprove them. John lives in Molesworth [?] road, an ordinary street in Plymouth, a row of typical Victorian houses. Just down the road is Stoke Damerel  Church. Back in the 18^th century this area was open scrubland, and Holmfirth road was just a stoney track. It seems that traders and carriers with their cartloads of fish from the harbour would take a shortcut across this scrubland. This is where John’s house now stands. In some way the 18^th century events seem to have been reactivated within the walls of the house that now lies across the old fishermen’s track.

John, Driving Instructor: It started in about April last year. I – presumably I got up for a coffee or something. For some reason I got up and walked through the door into the kitchen. And I smelt this fishy smell. And of course I carried on, made the coffee, came back. Then the next night it happened again, but it always happened about the same time  - five to five, five past five. And erm, then the next night and the next night, it continued. But the smell of fish was not just smelt by myself – quite a few people had come into the flat. By my children, who come on a Sunday. And er, if let’s say Daniel sat in the front room, and he used to watch the wrestling which was on Sky 1, the other two didn’t like it very much so they used to go into the bedroom and watch a video or something on the other channels.

Daniel: My brother and sister was watching a video in Dad’s room. So then they said ‘Daniel, Daniel, come in here!’ So I went into the other room, and they said ‘We can smell fish’. And I could smell it to. And I said Dad, maybe it’s your washing powder, why don’t you change your washing powder?

John: And I changed to a really expensive powder, and of course the smell was still there! So I went back to my cheap powder again!

Peter, Neighbour: John asked me to look after his flat while he went away for the weekend. He gave me the keys and I went in and had a look around. But as I went in the door, there was a very strong, overpowering smell of fish. And it was really bad. And I looked around the flat and nothing appeared to be out of order, everything was ok. And I came out again and I wondered what the smell was, and when I got back I told Yvonne, that’s the wife, about the smell.

Narrator: Smells and odours might seem a totally unlikely hint of underlying paranormal activity. In fact there is a long and detailed record of their being linked both to some types of psychic hallucination as well as to paranormal events. In this case it seems unlikely to be hallucination as we have no fewer than six independent witnesses. Professor Archie Roy has no doubts that there can be a powerful link between smells and the paranormal.

Archie Roy, Professor of Astronomy:  It’s not just that people see apparitions, and it’s not just that they sometimes hear voices. Every sense can register seemingly… phenomena. There have been many cases of people who must be taken to be honest, and have said that they have suddenly smelt a particular perfume, or a noxious smell, and subsequently it has disappeared. I myself have had a case where there was a very powerful perfume. So heavy, so old-fashioned, that I was sure my clothes would stink of it for hours afterwards.And then the entity (if it was an entity) said ‘I must go now, goodbye’ and the perfume was cancelled like that!

Bernard Carr, Professor of Astrophysics: As far as I’m concerned, smell is just one of the sense modalities, and just as some people see apparitions, other people hear sounds, if you like, and not physical but auditory hallucinations. Some people have tastes and some people have smells. And in a way the smells, the sense of smell is the most primitive, in the sense that if we go back to earlier lifeforms, the smell was one of the first ones to be developed. And indeed when people are falling into unconsciousness or dying, they say that smell is one of the last sense modes to go.

Narrator: But for John, the sense of something strange going on in his house had become too much. It constantly nagged away at his mind – this same event happening at the same time every evening. Eventually he summoned up the courage to confide in a friend who had some interest in paranormal events.

Mandy: John had worried, all anxious, about what had been going on. So the only thing that I could think of doing was contact Peter Bowers, who was some acquaintance of mine. Because he is more in tune with the spirit world, and I thought he would be the best person to pick up on what was going on.

John: He said, I’m actually coming to Plymouth tonight, to Plympton. But he said I will call round and help you, I’ll get rid of whatever it is. And he said, I will be there at seven o’clock. So fine, great. Mandy and I sat there having a coffee, having a chat, trying to discuss what we think it possibly could be. And at five to seven there’s a knock on te front door.

Mandy: John looked out the window, and there was nobody there. Also remembering at this point that this spirit wasn’t in the flat with us at that time. So anyway the knock came again. John thought it was Peter Bowers, but as I said when he looked out the window there was nobody there. And the knock came again and I said, well of course it could be that this spirit has been invited here by Peter Bowers, so we must let him in.

John: I said, ah, right, well you can answer the door then! So she brushed past me, opened the front door. And as she opened the door she said “Come in.” There was nobody there. It was spooky if you as me.

Mandy: As he walked past me, I could smell the fishy odour that had been associated with him. And he actually went right past me and right past John, who was like stood nearer to the flat door. Um, and er, we then, John and I went into the flat door, closed the door, and I said to this spirit, well have a seat, make yourself comfortable at home. Because my belief is that you treat them – they still think that they’re alive, so you have to talk to them as though they are alive.

John: By this time the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up like you wouldn’t believe, you know. And she said ‘sit down’ in this chair next to me. And the smell of fish was actually surrounding this chair.

Narrator: A few moments later Peter arrived. Remember he had had no warning, no previous connection to John and his story. All he knew about was the strange smell. He claims to have sensed the presence of some alien entity immediately. He went on to describe his contact in extraordinary detail. His age, physical appearance, the robbery, even most unlikely of all – a name.

Peter Bowers, Psychic Medium: Now the feeling was that it was a man about sixty, sixty five. A small man who would only come up to here on me, up to my shoulder. With rather thick set, greying hair. But with a very unhappy and miserable expression on his face. He gave me a date of 1759 and he gave me a name of John Goldsworthy. And he told me that he’d been if you like an itinerant fish merchant of some description, or pedlar, something like that. And he’d had a route of going from the back of the barbican where he lived, collecting fish and other commodities from various places where they’d been landed, and bringing them up round to the villages at the back of Plymouth. Then he’d go round the circuit and back home by the evening. And at some point in time he’d been robbed in the vicinity of this place and this house. And as a result of that it had caused a lot of hurt in his life. He’d been injured and his arm had been broken. His wife had left him at some stage. And all his misfortune if you like flowed from this one incident here. When a soul comes like this to be released, it’s necessary for them to make a connection through to the other side where they need to go. Because they’re trapped in a lower vibration down here on the earth, and they haven’t got the ability themselves to raise themselves into this new situation where they want to be. The reason they’re trapped is their sadness or fear or whatever of the condition they’ve got around them. So in this case what I did standing on the spot that I’m standing on now, I opened a vortex of energy into which he stepped, and it has the same effect as an elevator. And when the energy is right and he is in the right energy field, it’s literally just a case of him passing up and going. Now we always say a little prayer, the same as we would for anybody else that is hurt. And this is what happened on this occasion. And he was just lifted from this room where I’m standing now in the hall, and the whole thing would only take three or four minutes, it doesn’t take an enormous amount of time.

Narrator: This account, for all its graphic detail, leaves us with the eternal problem of what to believe. We have no way of sorting fact from fiction. Peter’s story could all be pure fabrication. But in this case the strange events at John’s house that evening were only the starting point. They opened up a remarkable trail and enabled James Goldsworthy of 1759 to make contact with James Goldsworthy 1996.

Narrator: immediately after Peter’s visit to the house in Moorsworth road, the strange events stopped. But for John it was an unexpected reaction. Instead of a sense of release he felt a deep sense of loss as though a member of the family had passed away.

John: The night after all this had happened I was sat in here by myself and it was about nine ten o’clock at night. I was watching something like the news at ten on the television. And I felt really, as though I‘d lost something or somebody. Like when you lose a member of the family and you get that horrible gut feeling. I had tears running down my face for some reason, and I was crying, I was sat here crying and I didn’t know the reason why. And obviously I knew it had something to do with what had happened. So  I rang up Peter and asked him what he thought it was. And he said, of course you’re going to feel like this for a couple of days afterwards. Because what he got rid of has been around for 2, 250 years. And at that point I decided I wanted to find out a little bit more about who he was, what he was. I started by asking Pete some questions, and he just started rattling it off. It was like he was talking to somebody up there.

Peter: The owner asked me if I could give him any more information to trace the man. Which I must admit was the furthest thing from my mind at that time. I told him that within the next few days something would happen which would make the whole situation much clearer. I wasn’t sure what that would be, only that something was going to happen which would tie in with the name of the man which we’d been given – James Goldsworthy.

Narrator: Only a few days later, the first part of Peter’s extraordinary prediction fell into place. John was giving a driving lesson to a complete stranger: a young man whose name was Jimmy, Jimmy Taylor.

John: We’d just finished the driving lesson and we sat down and I did a debrief with him. And he was talking about his stepfather who was taking driving lessons. And I said, send him to me, I’ll teach him how to drive, just jokingly. And I said, well if he’s your stepdad, where’s your real dad? And he said, oh he died. And what was he called? James Goldsworthy.

Jimmy: And that’s when John freaked out and started telling me about another person called James Goldsworthy that’s supposed to be haunting his house.

John: If your dad is James Goldsworthy then HE is james Goldsworthy, and I’m sat in this car next to James Goldsworthy. And I just couldn’t believe it.

Narrator: Both John and James were stunned by this event, and decided then and there to dig into the records of 18^th century Plymouth and find out if there’d ever been a James Goldsworthy. And if so, where he’d lived and died and where he’d been buried. They started with three mysterious clues Peter had claimed to get from the old fisherman. They were looking for an ancient church on a hill overlooking water.

John: He was sixty-ish, around that age, and he died in the middle to late 1700s. He said actually he’s buried in a church in the fold of the hill near water. But, it’s not any church, it was built before the 1500s. So I decided to go to the library and get a book out on churches and historic houses and such like. I went right through the whole lot until I actually found three churches it could possibly be. One was Saint B., one was Stoke Damerel and the other one was on the river but it was quite a long way off so we counted that one out really.

Narrator: The most appropriate church seemed to be the one at Stoke Damerel. It was near where the attack had taken place, and near where as it happened John and James both lived. But there was one major omission, it certainly didn’t overlook water. When we began to dig into the records however, we uncovered an extraordinary and hitherto unknown fact. That back in 1759 it had overlooked water – a tidal creek that ran at the bottom of the hill and was only filled in about a hundred years ago.

Sally, Records Researcher: This is Molesworth Road. As you can see at the bottom it meets the water of Stonehouse Creek. It was perfectly possible for small fishing boats to make their way up to this area at the bottom of Molesworth road. There were small cottages there that may well have been used as fishing cottages. Nowadays Victoria Park takes the place of Stonehouse Creek, it has been infilled and obviously can no longer be used for fishing.

Narrator: In Victorian times when the creek was filled in to become Victoria Park, the road across the park was clearly built on the lines of an older bridge. The fishing cottages are still there, now overlooking the park. So, Stoke Damerel church fitted Peter’s description in every respect. But what would the burial records reveal? this was the key test of Peter’s claim. If he was right and it should prove the death of a man called James Goldsworthy, some time after the year of the robbery, 1759. They did.

I am Paul Bradford the senior archivist at West Devon Records Office. The County Council’s archives for Plymouth. And we’re responsible for the records of the parish of Stoke Damerel, which is the parish of Devonport. And amongst the burial records that we have, I have a register which includes an entry for the 7^th of November 1774 which refers to a burial of one James Goldsworthy.

Narrator: Even with all this historical verification, at first hearing this story seems unbelievable, incredible – how is it possible? How does it fit into our view of reality. Can a man buried here in 1774 should be able to communicate with a living human being over 200 years later. It’s an idea that shatters our everyday frame of reference. But more and more scientists have come to believe that some psychic mediums are tuning in to a communiciations channel that science doesn’t yet understand.

Archie Roy: We have a real and important mystery here. There is no doubt that some mediums are seemingly acting as channels between people on this side and what one might call the communicating intelligence, whatever it may be. Information is got through these mediums that they simply could not have obtained in any normal way. What this also means is that the reductionist materialist model of a human being, as simply the animal that grew the big brain,a nd that you only get information through the five senses and that is all, is embarrassingly inadequate. There are faculties that the human being has that seem to be demonstrated most strongly by the phenomena of mediumship.

Peter: Mr Goldsworthy was trying to make some sort of contact with the James Goldsworhty who is alive now. The reason I’m not sure of. But no doubt the family will be. It’s an unusual occurrence in an instance like this, to get an entity that is actually able to identify itself and give so much information. It isn’t n ormal. But so many strange things happen, and people who I meet often tell me how strange things happen, how coincidences happen – that this is not really abnormal. There are lots of things happening like this all of the time. But it doesn’t sell newspapers and it’s only known by those people who happen to be aware of it at that time.

Narrator: We can only speculate. Can it be that the ancient James Goldsworthy’s purpose in making his presence felt when he did was to ensure the continuation of his name. He needed to contact James Taylor who had abandoned his father’s name. Either way the message from the past has had a profound effect on two people in the present.

Jimmy : I’ve now changed my name to James Goldsworthy to carry on my father’s name. with going through what has happened, the other James Goldsworthy could be a past relative, it’s encouraged me to change my name.

James: Before this experience happened to me I wasn’t very spiritual. I believed in god, obviously, I think most people do. I didn’t go to church. I wasn’t into talking to dead people! If you want to put it that way. Until after the event and now that this has all happened, things have actually been proven to me, where somebody can come into my house and say ‘There’s somebody in your house called James Goldsworthy and he’s buried in the church down the road’. From 250 years ago. Or as close as. I mean how does that guy know this James Goldsworthy? Where did he pick him up from. And the proof is it’s all in the records that this James Goldsworthy has been found. Now to me that is just fantastic. I mean I’m not here on television to try to prove to people that there is something on the other side. I’m just here to tell you that it’s been proven to me. And now my faith is being made so much stronger about the possibility that there is life after death.

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.