The ghostly drummer of Hickling Broad

 

Potter Heigham is a small village in Norfolk, not far from Hickling Broad. In the winter before the battle of Waterloo in 1815, a drummer boy, home on leave, fell in love with a girl from the village.

Though she returned his love, her father refused to accept a soldier as a son-in-law and the two were compelled to meet secretly at a place called Swim Coots, close to the Broad. Every evening the drummer boy would skate across the ice-covered Broad to meet her, but one night the ice gave way and he fell into the Broad and drowned.

However, his ghost still skated across the ice to meet his sweetheart. It is said that, at 7 o’clock on a misty February evening, the role of a drum can be heard across the Broad as the phantom skater appears through the gloom, beating a tattoo as he tries to summon his long lost love.

© John Welford

McRaven House, a haunted house in Vicksburg, Mississippi

 

McRaven House, on Harrison Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi, played an important role during the American Civil War and also features on lists of notorious “haunted houses”.

When General Grant captured Vicksburg in 1863 he established the Union headquarters at McRaven House, from where he was able to direct operations concerned with control of the Mississippi River. Stationed at the house were Colonel Wilson and his aide, Captain McPherson. McPherson’s role was to liaise between the occupying troops and the residents of the town.

One night, MacPherson did not return from his usual tour of the vicinity and was declared to be missing. On the following night, so it is said, the mutilated apparition of Captain MacPherson, dripping with blood, appeared to Colonel Wilson and told him that he had been murdered by Confederate sympathisers and his body thrown into the river.

Since that time, the ghost of Captain McPherson has continued to appear to occupants of McRaven House, each time telling them the same story.

McPherson’s ghost is not the only one to have been seen. Other Civil War soldiers and a woman with long brown hair have also been reported.

Despite the building being blessed by a priest in 1991, ghostly sightings have continued at McRaven House, which has become a popular tourist destination.

© John Welford

The Voynich Manuscript

 

The Voynich Manuscript is one of the stranger items held by the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts library of Yale University. Physically, it is a tiny notebook comprising pages of text and illustrations, mainly of plants, but also including astronomical and astrological charts, recipes, and pictures of naked women. However, the text is in a language that nobody has ever been able to translate or decipher, which means that the origin and purpose of the manuscript are still shrouded in mystery ever since it first came to public attention before World War I.

 

Wilfred Voynich

Wilfred Voynich (1865-1930) was a dealer in books and manuscripts who operated firstly in London and then in New York. While working in London, having opened his business there in 1895, he undertook regular trips to continental Europe seeking items that he could purchase for sale in his shop. It was on such a trip in 1912 that he acquired the manuscript that has ever since borne his name.

One mystery, apart from the nature of the manuscript, is precisely how Voynich came to own it. He claimed that he had bought it in a castle in southern Europe. However, it emerged in the 1960s, more than 30 years after his death, that he had acquired it from a Jesuit college in Italy, along with some other documents. It also appears that Voynich might have stolen it from the college’s library as opposed to acquiring it legally.

Voynich claimed that there had been a letter accompanying the manuscript and that this was by a 17th-century scientist from Prague who in turn claimed that it had been written by Roger Bacon, the 13th century English philosopher who was known to have been interested in the subjects covered by the manuscript. Voynich, as a dealer, would have had every reason for wanting to believe such a story, to which he added the idea that the manuscript could have been taken to Prague by the Elizabethan alchemist John Dee, who was known to have visited Prague and to have met the Emperor who, according to the supposed letter, had owned the manuscript.

 

Real or Fake? 

This is the question that has been at the heart of the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript ever since its appearance. The suspicion that Voynich had acquired a clever forgery, or perhaps created it himself, was always going to be present in the mind of anyone tempted to part with the large sum of money for which Voynich sought to sell it. However, the best way by which Voynich might possibly have been able to prove its provenance, without the equally mysterious letter that he no longer possessed, would have been to offer a translation of the text, which could then have been compared with other known works by Roger Bacon. It would be remarkable for a forger or dubious dealer to be unable to offer this definitive proof, so the fact that Voynich could never do so does seem to count in his favour as a dealer offering a genuine item for sale.

Carbon dating of the vellum on which the text was written – a technique that was not available during Voynich’s lifetime – has shown that it dates from the early 15^th century, and the style of the handwriting matches that time period, thus proving that it could not have been the work of Roger Bacon. However, the fact remains that it could have been forged at an even later date – there is no reason why a modern forger could not have used 15^th century vellum and copied the appropriate handwriting style.

 

But what is it?

That is the other major mystery surrounding the manuscript. The text is written in a language that has resisted all efforts at translation, as it resembles no known language and the characters are not recognizable as letters in any known alphabet. No codebreaker has been able to suggest a possible cipher that might be of use.

At first sight, the notebook appears to be a herbal, by which is meant a guide to herbs and other plants that could be used in medicinal preparations, together with notes on how to make them. However, very few of the illustrations can be identified as being those of actual plants, so how could the document have had any practical use even if the text made sense to someone?

One suggestion that has been offered is that it is an example of “outsider art”. This is work produced by somebody undergoing some kind of mental breakdown, and there have certainly been cases of people suffering hallucinations or severe psychosis who have devoted many hours to creating extraordinary artworks and documents that made no sense to anyone apart from, possibly but by no means certainly, themselves.

As it is, the Voynich Manuscript remains a mystery. Unsellable, it ended up being presented to the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts library of Yale University, where it remains to this day.

© John Welford

 

Nell Crook and the Dark Entry of Canterbury Cathedral

 

The Dark Entry is a passage that runs between Canterbury Cathedral’s Green Court and the old infirmary cloister, passing underneath the building known as the Prior’s Lodging. It is reputedly haunted by the ghost of Nell Crook, who lived and died during the reign of King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.

A servant of a canon of the cathedral, she discovered that her employer was having an affair with his niece. Out of jealousy, she killed them both by serving them with a poisoned pie. Her crime was uncovered and her fate was to be buried alive beneath the pavement of the Dark Entry.

Her ghost has haunted the passageway ever since, particularly on Friday nights! It is advisable to avoid the Dark Entry at these times, given that seeing Nell’s ghost will bring about one’s own death, or so it is said.

The story is one of many told by the Rev R H Barham (1788-1845), writing as Thomas Ingoldsby in The Ingoldsby Legends, which first appeared in 1837. These were macabre, satirical and witty tales, mainly in verse, that continued the fashion for horror and mystery that was current in the early 19^th century, but in a form that was suitable for children.

So did Nell Crook ever really exist, or was she merely an invention on the part of Rev Barham? Who knows?

© John Welford

The Devil's Footprints

 

Did the Devil visit East Devon in February 1855? There are still some people today who think that this is the only possible explanation.

On the morning of 9th February, after a two-inch fall of snow and a severe frost, people came out of their houses to find strange footmarks leading across the frozen countryside in single file. The marks, resembling those of a donkey’s hooves, were in a single line with each print 8 inches apart, one in front of the other. They certainly looked as though they have been made by a two-legged as opposed to a four-legged animal.

The trail was on both sides of the estuary of the River Exe, for a distance of as much as 100 miles. It zigzagged about, leading through gardens, over gates, haystacks, walls and roofs. Local people reported seeing the prints in some very strange places, such as under a gooseberry bush and through a 6-inch pipe. When dogs were brought in to investigate a thicket through which the trail passed, they retreated, howling in terror.

As might be expected, the event was widely reported and several newspapers made careful investigations. Attempts to reach a logical conclusion as to the cause were not helped by the differing descriptions and drawings supplied by witnesses.

It was soon revealed that the trail was not made in a single night but over several. It also became clear that the footmarks were not consistent along the whole length of the trail. In places it looked as though they might have been made by large birds, particularly those prints seen on rooftops.

Many suggestions were made to explain how the footmarks on the ground could have been made. Although most people thought that they looked as though they had been made by a donkey, others said that badgers, otters, cranes and even mountain wildcats were responsible. One amateur naturalist even thought that the prints most closely resembled those of a kangaroo!

It was the fact that the prints were clearly those of a cloven hoof that gave rise to the notion that the Devil himself had visited East Devon. At Woodbury they led up to the church door and looked as though they had been made by a hot iron. The work of a practical joker could not therefore be discounted, at least at this location.

Whatever the cause of this strange phenomenon, many local people refused to leave home after sunset for a long time afterwards. They, at least, were convinced that the Devil had singled out Devon for his special attention.

© John Welford

St Dunstan, the Devil and a pair of tongs

 

In the convent of the Holy Child Jesus at Mayfield in Sussex is a pair of tongs which tradition claims was the property of the great Saxon churchman St Dunstan, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 960 to 978. However, this cannot be true, because although the Monastery stands on the site of Mayfield Palace, where Dunstan lived when he was Archbishop of Canterbury, the tongs were certainly not made before the 13^th century, some 300 years after Dunstan’s death.

Many stories were told about the piety of Dunstan and his conversion to Christianity, and some of these make mention of rumours that he had occult powers and may even have dabbled in black magic.

After his conversion by St Alphege, he divided his time between spreading the message of the Gospels and working as a blacksmith at Mayfield. The legend concerning his thwarting of the Devil comes from this time.

One day, so the story goes, the Devil was so enraged by the work that Dunstan was doing as a Christian that he disguised himself as a beautiful young woman and set about seducing him.

Dunstan did not even look up as he worked at his anvil, while the Devil danced around the room. At one point, the dance became so animated that the devil’s skirts rode up to reveal the hooves on his feet, which might seem a bit strange given his otherwise immaculate impersonation of a young maiden.

Dunstan promptly seized a pair of red-hot tongs from the forge and clamped them onto the Devil’s nose. His screams could be heard up to three miles away as he fled from the forge. As he flew through the sky he caught sight of the springs of Tunbridge Wells, swooped down, and plunged his nose into the water.

To this day, the spa water of Tunbridge Wells still tastes of sulphur!

© John Welford

Were the Dogons visited by aliens from outer space - or somewhere closer?

People who are keen to believe that aliens from outer space have visited Planet Earth at various times in our history sometimes point to the Dogon people of Mali (West Africa) as evidence of such a visitation.

This is because the Dogons appear to possess certain pieces of astronomical knowledge that they could never have worked out for themselves. In particular, they are very well informed about the star Sirius. This was reported by a French anthropologist named Marcel Griaule who studied the Dogon people during the mid-20^th century and wrote about them in 1946.

The Dogon people knew that Sirius was a double star, with one of the pair taking 50 years to orbit the other. This was extraordinary knowledge, given that the companion star is too faint to be seen with the naked eye and the Dogons did not have telescopes to look through.

What explanation could there have been for this knowledge? Surely they must have been visited at some time by aliens who lived on a planet that orbited one of the Sirius stars?

Or might it have had something to do with the team of astronomers who had visited Mali in 1893 to view a solar eclipse?

© John Welford