Strange But True? Chingle Hall

Excellently, John Green and his disappearing pipework does feature in this episode. Interestingly he implies that pipework disappeared but the boiler did not - so presumably this negates my theory about wandering into the wrong room. Still, Chingle Hall doesn't even sound very big. So it probably wasn't a very good theory in the first place.

Strange but True? – Series 3, episode 6: Chingle Hall.

Michael Aspel: Good evening. There’s nothing like a good ghost story to pull in the punters. For pubs and hotels claiming of a ghostly presence amongst the kegs or hovering on the landing is a sure-fire way to attract a lot of custom. But one manor house just six miles north of Preston has a boast which outdoes the rest. In the past 50 years Chingle Hall, its owners claim, has been the home to some 20 spooks. Not bad for a building with only four bedrooms. But then they never rest.

[reconstruction] Ladies and Gentlemen, you must concentrate! You must not break the circle. Do not break the circle, whatever may happen in this room tonight.

MA: Just another night at Chingle Hall, the 700 year old manor house set on the remote moorlands north of Preston, Lancashire. Steeped in a grisly history it’s perhaps no surprise that it’s claimed to be Britain’s most haunted house. So notorious is the hall, and so intriguing the tales, that ghosthunters come from far and wide in the hope of experiencing something from the other side.

Jason Karl, Resident: The first time I ever came here was around four and a half years ago, and I was convinced on the first night of the hauntings here. I don’t know how many ghosts are here, I don’t know what is hre, or why it’s here, but I know it’s here.

David Butters, Local historian: There have been a lot of stories about sightings and apparitions at Chingle Hall, and it’s got some very grisly legends attached to it. I‘ve heard tales of people being locked up and heads buried in walls, a very gory and bloody history.

MA: Whatever the truth, people do believe they’ve seen extraordinary things at Chingle.

Paul Crone, TV Reporter: I will never go inside of Chingle Hall again, I mean there’s just something so spooky about the place, I will not step foot inside Chingle Hall.

JK: People do come here complete non-believers and do go away complete believers.

MA: Down the years 100s of people have passed through Chingle’s doors, saying they’ve experienced something inexplicable. Photographs and research notes boast of what they claim as evidence. People pay up to £40 a night to ghost watch at Chingle – it’s booked for months ahead. But visitors are not usually locals.

DB: Tourist place of course. People come from other parts to see the ghosts. But I think you’d be hard pressed to find a local – certainly I can’t think  of one who’s said they’ve seen a ghost there.

MA: So is Chingle Hall just a tourist trap dreamt up to attract the gullible, or is it a legitimate paranormal study centre?

Chris Edwards, St John Ambulance: The way Chingle Hall was sold to me personally was you were guaranteed to see a ghost, something was guaranteed to happen. I thought it was a load of codswallop, a big con.

MA: Well you wouldn’t expect a down to earth Lancashire lad to be easily persuaded that ghosts exist. Chris Edwards from Southport went to the Hall to raise money for his charity. He was a confirmed sceptic.

CE: I was reading a book on my own when I saw a movement out the corner of my eye. I looked up and as I looked up a figure of a monk drew across the door, appeared to look at me, and basically disappeared around the door again and vanished into thin air. I was absolutely petrified for a few seconds. I need hard proof before I believe anything and it’s been provided here at Chingle Hall.

DB: I think the ghostly monk that most people talk about is John Wall. He is the last catholic martyr in this country, he was hung drawn and quartered in 1679. His head is supposed to have been brought back to CH and buried somewhere in the grounds.

MA: The ghostly sightings led local tv reporter Paul Crone to investigate Chingle.

[reconstruction] – Let’s go upstairs to the John Wall room, shall we? It’s supposed to be haunted.

MA: He spent the night with a group of fundraising nurses from Royal Preston hospital.

PC: I thought – we’ll sit here for nine hours, nothing will happen, we’ll film, we won’t hear anything, we won’t see anything. How wrong I was. I mean basically it just turned into a complete nightmare.

Alison Westbury-Spurr, Nurse: We all came that evening looking for a good time, a good night out. A group of girls that all got on well. We went home in the morning very different people. I just turned my head to look at one of my colleagues when I saw a figure behind her, a cowled figure, and it looked like a monk stood behind, looking down on her. I couldn’t see its face, I couldn’t see any features. I just felt frozen, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t move and it took me a few seconds to say anything. I was frightened.

PC: Everybody knew she wasn’t joking, and it was genuine, and she saw something and she was absolutely positive. Now I couldn’t see anything but I knew she was telling the truth.

MA: Paul’s own encounter was to happen on the staircase.

PC: There was no one there and the door just slammed shut and I went ice cold from head to toe, so people dived with their cameras and as all the flashes went off we saw a blue streak just whizz up the stairs. You can’t make something like that up, it genuinely did happen.

MA: Even in the cold light of day when the ghost hunters have gone home, the hall’s unearthly inhabitants seem to be active. Plumber John Green came to the hall in winter last year, to install central heating.

John Green, Plumber: I live quite a way from here and I’ve never heard of the place or the reputation that it had.

MA: John needed help to get the work completed in time, so he called in a mate the next morning.

[reconstruction] I finished off in here yesterday. What the hell has happened to my pipes?

JG: To my amazement there was just nothing there. The boiler was in position but all the flue, the pipes, there was just nothing there. It would have been impossible for anyone to have ripped those out without making an absolute devastation, and even an expert would have taken some while to remove everything.

MA: When he came back down to the room minutes later, John Green was in for the surprise of his life. All the pipes were back where he’d fitted them the night before.

JG: I just couldn’t believe it. I was in shock. I didn’t know what to believe or say.

MA: Could any of the goings-on be explained by Chingle’s mysterious past or former residents?

DB: One of the people we do know lived in Chingle Hall is Eleanor de Singleton. She was the only daughter of John de Singleton. She was deemed mad and locked up in a room. She was abused by the rest of her family and died a very tragic death at the age of about 20.

MA: Was Eleanor the uninvited ghost at a séance held by fundraisers on the 7^th of October 1995?

Annette Cox, Charity worker: I must admit I didn’t really expect anything to happen. I really didn’t.

JK: They’d come for a bit of a laugh – the novelty value of staying in a haunted house.

Vic Allonby, Milkman: I thought it were a load of rubbish, I’d seen these things on television, in films and things, and I didn’t think much of it. I could feel a pressure on my back, a warm pressure. Like someone had two arms on my back. The pressure just built and built and I thought ‘what is it?’.

AC: I thought Vic was actually going to have a fit, I was quite concerned.

MA: Whatever it was then started on another member of the séance.

Angela Dewhurst, Nurse: The feeling I had was like a rush of adrenaline, but it lasted a lot longer than (shivers) ooh – like someone walks over your grave. It took a long time to actually pass through me.

MA: It moved round to include Vic’s wife Wendy.

Wendy Allonby: I could feel this unusual feeling, you know as a baby’s in your stomach type-of-thing, and you can feel it, you know, it was just pushing and pushing.

AC: There was now lavender, it was strongest near Vic and it seemed to come round. And with the smell of lavender came this awful sadness, just a horrible feeling of sadness.

VA: The tears were absolutely rolling down my face. I’ve only cried so much when my dad died, sort of thing.

MA: He wasn’t the only one – soon Angela, Annette and the others also started to sob.

WA: I started to pour with tears, and I felt like I was releasing this sadness and letting people know I was upset, but I don’t know why I was upset.

When I started to cry the tears were just rolling. It wasn’t me at all. It was something that was here I think.

JK: I wanted to capture the moment on camera, on film, to get the moment to come out.

AC: I could actually see the outline. Not exactly a woman, but the outline of a lady, and I was absolutely amazed.

JK: I was worried because it was getting out of control. There were far too many people affected there, I’ve never seen anything as dramatic before or after that event.

MA: Were these people experiencing mass hysteria, auto suggestion perhaps? Or would the photo hold the key to a paranormal explanation? When it was developed there was nothing standing behind Vic, no figure, not even a vague shape. That hasn’t persuaded those at the séance to change their story.

VA: I’m convinced the Hall is haunted. What haunts it I don’t know.

AWS: So much happened in that one night, it was unreal. It was definitely haunted.

MA: Ghost hunters fully book up Chingle Hall for months in advance. I admit, once I saw something in the hotel that made me scream. It was the bill.

Transcript of the Cardiff Poltergeist episode of 'Strange But True'

Another transcription - this is from Strange But True, Series one, Episode one, first broadcast in October 1994. 

Michael Aspel, Narrator: Behind a street in Cardiff, down an alley, the quiet life was about to be shattered.

John: We started in this building about fifteen years ago, repairing all sorts of grass-cutting equipment. And later on we started to sell mowers.

MA: John and Pat Matthews, helped by Pat’s brother Fred, ran a thriving business here, no real worries, just ordinary everyday irritations.

Reconstruction: (Noise from the roof) It’s those blasted kids throwing stones. I’ll go see to them.

MA: John went to catch the young vandals red-handed. But there were no vandals. The stones seemed to be coming from nowhere.

Reconstruction: Pathetic, John, haven’t you got any control over them?

There’s nobody there!

Pull the other one. Come out of thin air, did they?

John: We were baffled that there weren’t any kids around here and nobody that could throw stones. We just couldn’t understand it. We just couldn’t understand where they were coming from.

Fred Cook: I thought he was a nutter to be honest. I thought he was mad. I thought ‘people throwing stones, it’s got to be. Can’t be anything else.’

John: I started to get worried that there was something strange here in this building.

MA: Whatever it was, it was about to move in at Mower Services.

John: I would see little things flying across the room.

Fred: It used to throw stones and things like ball bearings.

Pat: Then suddenly, in this one corner of the shop it got ice, ice cold. And then there was a terrible smell of burning.

MA: Somebody or something seemed to be playing childish tricks, like hiding keys.

Fred: We searched high and low for these keys – it went on for five or ten minutes or so, and then all of a sudden these keys came shooting across the floor.

MA: Then money began appearing.

Pat: Every morning, it got in turns we were having it turns, each had a fiver or a ten pound note, and it was stuck in the ceiling tile.

MA: Unable to believe that one of them wasn’t responsible, the family set up a test.

John: I said to close the doors, both sides, and we’ll see what’s happening.

Reconstruction: Right we’ll settle this once and for all. Hands on the bench. Fingers touching. (The three men are lined up). Right. Come on then – throw us a stone. (One rattles onto the floor).

John: There was no chance of anybody being in that shop except us three.

Reconstruction: Hang on, I think if we’re going to do this as a proper test, we should be writing everything down.

John: With that, a pen dropped. And I started saying things like engine parts.

Reconstruction: What about a plug? (A spark plug falls)

Fred: We knew then, it wasn’t one of us. We were looking at each other and our hands were on the bench.

John: We were there two hours. And I went home and told my wife I had just spent the most fascinating couple of hours in my life. I couldn’t believe it. We were never really afraid of it. It became part of the family.

Fred: We decided we’d name him. We called him Pete the Polt, Pete the Poltergeist.

MA: A poltergeist called Pete? Could there be such a thing? And why was it favouring Mower Services with its attentions? The family needed expert help. They called in David Fontana, a university professor with an interest in the paranormal.

Prof. David Fontana, Psychologist: Most of my visits were unannounced, so they didn’t know that I was coming at any particular time.

MA: With the element of surprise, the professor would surely get to the bottom of what was really happening.

DF: As I entered the workshop, at that very moment a stone was thrown across the room and bounced off a piece of machinery. John was sitting there talking to one of the sales representatives but there was no question that either of them was involved in this. John looked up at me and said “There – see what I mean? He’s greeting you.” I think I was very pleased actually, because it’s so rare for investigators to be there when things actually happen. That made me take things very much more seriously than perhaps I otherwise would.

MA: Professor Fontana was so convinced that he filed reports on what he called “the responsive poltergeist.” He said it possessed both “intent and the rudimentary intelligence necessary to accomplish this intent.” And he drew diagrams showing how, when objects were thrown into a corner he called ‘the focus of activity’, some force catapulted them back.

DF: You don’t see the things in midair, you hear them hit the wall and clatter to the ground, you look round and the stone is there, but you don’t actually see it in flight. Which, in the sense rather strengthens the idea that nobody’s playing tricks, because if they were, you would see the things in flight.

MA: With Professor Fontana’s reports, the case began to attract attention across Wales.

Pat: I wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea, and we were afraid that if we started advertising about it, we would frighten customers away.

MA: But the customers kept coming, and so many people became eye witnesses that this became one of the biggest poltergeist cases ever.

Joyce Glenn: I was just as sceptical as everybody else and heard all about this ‘poltergeist’, but I was in the shop one day and little nuts and bolts sort of were just flying around and dropping from nowhere.

MA: After thieves broke into motor services one night, the insurance assessor who came witnessed it too.

Gareth Lucas: When I was there I heard the stones or noises coming from the back of the shop. When I asked them what it was about, I was told “Oh that’s Pete the Poltergeist.” I didn’t really believe him. So I opened the door and looked through, and I could see a stone whizzing around on the floor. There was nobody else out there.

MA: When Gareth Lucas went back to the office and told his story, the other insurance staff not surprisingly laughed. Until a colleague went, and the same happened to him.

Reg Jenkin: Quite to my amazement, small stones and things were flying around and pinging off shelves, and I was able then to go back to the office and confirm his story!

MA: Even the Baptist Church, one of two chapels either side of Mower Services, began to experience poltergeist phenomena.

Rev Mike Fuller: Before I knew anyone else had problems, one evening I was working up here in the office, and stones started hitting the window. I did everything I could to find out what it was – there were no people down there, I went down and looked round. There was nobody there that could throw stones, but when I came back upstairs the whole business continued.

MA: But the minister believes he has an explanation.

Rev Mike Fuller: As a Christian I believe we live in a visible and seen world which has a supernatural dimension wrapped round it.

MA: So what might that supernatural dimension be? Maurice Gross is a leading poltergeist expert. He’s been investigating cases for the past seventeen years.

Maurice Grosse: There are two main theories of poltergeist phenomena. One is that some people have the ability to exteriorise a force which affects their physical surroundings without physical means. And the second theory is interference from outside entities. Now we don’t know what these entities are, but sometimes they appear to be spirits of dead people.

MA: Nobody knew what the Mower Services poltergeist might be, until one day Fred says he saw it.

Fred: We were fixing this mower on the floor, and I looked up and there was a tiny boy.

(reconstruction) John, don’t do anything too violent.

 What are you talking about? I’ll have to be violent to get this thing off.

No, I don’t mean that. Do as I say. Don’t turn round quickly, but look up gently and look up at the shelf behind you, okay?

What are you talking about?

He was up there! On the shelf. A little boy. It must be Pete!

Fred: Half a house brick came hurtling down, and we both panicked with amazement. You can imagine he was all grey. No face, but the face was there. It’s hard to explain. And all you could see was his hand waving.

MA: From then on, the poltergeist never left Fred alone. Last year, Mower Services outgrew its old premises and moved to a new industrial estate. Pete the Poltergeist didn’t follow. He moved in with Fred instead.

Fred: And there’s countless things that happened at home. Pictures tilting in the frames. Spoons being thrown up the stairs. Pound coins. Oh it’s amazing.

MA: Fred Cook and his wife have moved home to escape their unwanted guest. They took the precaution of breaking a piece of pottery that had kept appearing and disappearing. So far there’s been no sign of anything happening again.

Transcript of the Stocksbridge Bypass episode of "Strange But True."

This is my own transcription - I've tried to make it as accurate as possible with the witnesses' words, but have left out a few of the "aarghs" and "what is it?!"s of the reconstructions.

This one was first aired a few years before the 'Ghosthunters' episode, on the 2nd December, 1994 (so says Wikipedia).

 

Michael Aspel: Of all the people who claim to have witness unexplained phenomena, very few can offer what can be regarded as proof. Their stories can be easily dismissed - and often are - but do they deserve more? All we can do is look them in the eye, and decide for ourselves whether they’re genuine, and ask ourselves why anyone would make up such a story especially when they risk ridicule. The key witnesses in our first story tonight are people you’d normally trust. Some indeed have frequently given evidence in courts of law. Here’s the story, believe what you will.

Ever since building work began, a new section of road across the top of the Peak District has attracted reports of strange happenings. The first was from two security guards, and this is what they saw one night.

Voice of Peter Owens, security company manager:  A group of children running in a circle, in a field, at the side of a construction site. The time was round about midnight and you just wouldn’t see the children playing there at that time of night when it was so far away from any houses. And the children disappeared. They were security men who’d been in the industry a long time, they knew the job, they’d worked nights for a number of years, and not the type of people that you’d expect to be scared.

Michael Aspel:  The A616 used to pass straight through this old steel town, but then the road planners got to work on Stocksbridge - they built a sweeping new bypass. While it may have made the town quieter, some believe the bypass disturbed something that would have been best left alone. Certainly the two security guards who were watching over the equipment being used to build it would agree. But they were still puzzling over the sight of the children. But that was just the beginning.

Peter Owens: The next incident was later on that night.

(reconstruction): Here, stop the car, look there’s someone up there.

Don’t be daft. There can’t be.

Yes there is, look! You drive around, shine your lights on’t bridge, I’ll wait down here.

Peter Owens: They immediately started the vehicle up, shone the headlights towards the hooded figure and the headlights actually shone through the figure.

(reconstruction): Oh god! It’s disappeared into thin air!

Let’s get out of here!

MA: The men in a state of shock called their boss out. He was alarmed at the state they were in.

PO: They were physically shaking, the complexion was very white and pallid. One of the guards was actually crying.

(reconstruction): It were difficult to describe, it looked like a monk.

I mean what were it doing there? It were evil.

How can it just disappear??

M.A.:  First thing the next morning the men went to the police. The officer on duty knew them.

PC Dick Ellis: It were obvious they’d seen or heard something. They were both spooked, and basically I said to them - it’s not really a police matter, and there was nothing I could do about it, and perhaps jokingly I told them that really they needed the church more than they needed the police.

MA: But they took him seriously - they went to Stocksbridge church and refused to leave.

DE:  About an hour or so later I received a phone call from my boss, and I was told to go up to the church and sort this matter out. Firstly to get them out of the church, and then to see if I could find out anything that they’d actually seen, heard, or whatever.

MA:   The security guards never, it seems, got over what happened to them.

PO:  One of them left after 3 days, and the other one stayed with us roughly 2 to 3 months. And neither of the two guards would set foot on that site again, even in the daylight.

MA: While the bypass was being built, runner Graham Brooke was training for a marathon. One day he was out jogging with his son, Nigel.

GB: I saw a chap walking with his back to the traffic, he was walking in the middle of the road.

Nigel:  I looked at him and you could see he had no features to it except for a nose and eye sockets.

GB: I could smell like this fusty rotteny smell.

Nigel: Not a human type smell.

GB:  And then I could see that he wasn’t walking on the road, he was like walking in the road, and from below the knee down, you know, you couldn’t see anything.

MA: Each time things are apparently seen, the descriptions vary, but the reputation of the bypass deepens.

David Simpson:  We were coming home from Judi’s parents over the bridge that goes over the bypass.

Judi Simpson:  I could see out of the corner of my eyes like a grey apparition - there was actually no facial expressions.

DS: It was hovering, arms and legs were flailing all over the place.

[reconstruction]: That’s strange it looks like a man running – but he’s not running on the ground.

DS: It ran up the embankment.

JS:  It actually rose from the side into the road, and disappeared into the car.

DS:  I can think of no other explanation for what we saw - in my mind (I think in both of our minds), what we saw has to, had to have been a ghost.

MA:  So if something does keep appearing on the bypass, what is it? Lucinda June is a psychic. She says she knows.

Lucinda June: I was driving along the Stocksbridge bypass, and the car started to become very very cold. With this came a smell of musty books. Then all of a sudden, a darkness appeared to the left hand side of me, and I felt very very frightened. And I did pick up the spirit of a monk that had been there 500 years previous.

MA:  But why should a long dead monk be on what is now the Stocksbridge Bypass?  It has been discovered that there were once monastery farms in the area.

Trevor Lodge, local historian: The rumour, or the story, is that one of these monks became disillusioned with the rather harsh autocratic way of life. He came here to Underbank Hall, and worked the rest of his natural life here as groundsman, or whatever, and subsequently when he died he was buried in unhallowed ground.

MA: Some believe the bypass may have been built over the supposed monk’s grave. And they also have theories to explain the children seen by the security guards.

TL:  Children were used in the valley’s coalmines in the late-18th and mid-19^th century, and the rumour suggests that there’s been some sort of mining catastrophe.

MA: So, a phantom monk, ghostly children... After dealing with the security men in the church, PC Ellis and his colleague John Beet were sent to investigate.

[reconstruction]: Let’s switch the radios off.

Dick Ellis: We sat in the panda car with the lights off and the engine off. We sat looking at the bridge and after a while I was convinced I could see something moving about on the bridge. Not wanting to spook meself or John I kind of looked at John.

[reconstruction]: Hang on, what’s that up there?

Go and see what it is, Dick.

DE: I actually climbed up the ladder onto the bridge, and there was a lot of things scattered about on the top of the bridge.

[reconstruction]: It’s only a sheet of polythene.

John Beet: Although once we thought we’d found out what it was, and what was actually on the bridge, we decided to give it another 10, 15 minutes and say we’ll forget it and go back on our normal patrol.

DE:  I suddenly got this feeling - you can’t explain it, there’s the saying ‘someone’s walked over your grave’ which turns you cold. And I then became aware that somebody now had appeared directly on my right hand side, and was virtually leaning and pressing themselves against the car. I managed to cast my head quickly to the right and remember seeing the upper section of somebody’s chest, torso, and a clear v-sign [he indicates as if a V-neck jumper neckline]. When I got out on my side, not a person, nothing about at all. I even hit the deck and looked under the vehicle because nobody could have run away from us, there were bankings on both sides, nobody ran forwards or backwards.

JB:  We went to start the car and at first the car wouldn’t start, and we stated to panic a little bit.  We drove off and radioed our colleagues.

DE: There was a bang behind the car which I can only really put down to sounding like somebody was hitting the back of the car with something like a baseball bat or a pickaxe handle. Things on my job have frightened me, and it wasn’t the sort of fear you get from violence offered towards you or anything like that. It was more the kind of dread feeling, or knowing that something’s happening that you have no control over. [Beet agrees].

MA: Just for the record, the Stocksbridge Bypass was opened on Friday 13^th.