Inside the Supernatural. Jean Ritchie

a more controlled way, the Toronto Society for Psychical Research created their own ghost in 1974. Eight of them, under the supervision of British mathematician Dr A.R.G. Owen, assembled around a table with their hands clearly visible on top and made ‘contact’ with a ghost they had invented themselves: a Royalist knight at the time of the English civil war, called Philip. Philip would answer questions by rapping on the table, and would make the table tilt and eventually levitate off the ground. But the framework of the fictional Philip’s life had all been worked out beforehand by the group: he lived in a large house called Diddington Manor, he had a wife called Dorothea and had been passionately in love with a gypsy girl who was burned as a witch. Philip died by committing suicide, out of guilt for not having saved the girl. The ‘ghost’ of Philip accepted the characteristics assigned to him and even filled in more background details about himself.

      Despite each member of the group suspecting the others of cheating, there was never any evidence of it, and some of the physical phenomena staggered everyone present. It was traditional for the group to hand around sweets, leaving one for Philip. On one occasion, when one of them jokingly tried to take Philip’s sweet, the table tilted alarmingly away from him, but the sweet did not slide down it. Neither did others that were put next to it.

      The group embarked on ‘creating’ Philip because they were interested in recording physical phenomena. They did not create an apparition of him, but the experiment demonstrates that the mind can create a ghost personality.

      Hauntings have been reported since time immemorial. There are many references to them in classical literature. Because their manifestations are generally less dramatic and more sporadic than poltergeist cases, researchers have been present at fewer hauntings when phenomena have occurred, although there are well-attested cases of several witnesses experiencing the same phenomena. Most cases which are quoted in books on the supernatural as prime examples of hauntings are old. This is probably less to do with the frequency or quality of hauntings and more to do with the amount of time and interest available to record them properly. There are reputedly haunted houses in every district of Britain but remarkably few in which independent witness statements have been logged and compared.

      The Despard case, which was first reported in 1892, is accepted as a classic and is still being studied and scrutinized in detail by researchers (it is often referred to as the Morton case, after the man who first wrote about it). A ‘tall woman in black’ was seen so often in the Despard family home in Cheltenham that some guests took her for another visitor. The woman always held a handkerchief to the lower part of her face. Unlike many apparitions, she was not confined to one spot but moved around the house and grounds. She was able to walk through objects and trip wires rigged deliberately to catch her. When a circle of people joined hands around her, she passed through the circle between two people and disappeared. Altogether, seventeen people bore witness to having seen her, some of whom had no prior knowledge of her ‘presence’ in the house. There were other assorted phenomena reported: footsteps, doors banging, handles turning.

      According to Tony Cornell and Dr Alan Gauld, ‘minor hauntings’, where there are sounds, objects are moved and lights are switched on and off, but where there is no apparition, are far more common than poltergeists or ghosts. Yet because these cases are difficult to assess (and perhaps because they are rather dull) they do not find their way into case collections and parapsychological literature. Cases are also extremely hard to categorize, many of them overlapping the apparition and minor haunting groupings. One case Cornell and Gauld report in their book, Poltergeists, is the story of a haunting that took place in 1971 and 1972, in a substantial five-bedroomed detached house lived in by a married couple, who were both college lecturers, and their four children. After moving into the house, they experienced an assortment of phenomena: a spoon was seen suspended in mid air, a stone which had come out of a ring was moved from inside a jewel box to the bed, a noise was heard as if a trunk was being dragged across the landing, the sound of drawers being opened and closed was heard on numerous occasions, and one of the daughters and her cousin reported seeing an apparition during the night, a man who stood near the mantelpiece in the lounge with his head on his hands. Breathing noises, singing, a voice with a Scottish accent, footsteps and muffled whispers were all heard. The front door bell rang, and so did the telephone, when there was no one there. Gauld and Cornell believe the family were excellent witnesses, and say so in their book:

      ‘When one investigates such cases on the spot, and meets the people concerned, the evidence even in the most superficially impressive examples tends to crumble before one’s eyes; but sometimes the witnesses on better acquaintance seem so careful and so conscientious that one can neither dismiss nor yet completely explain away their cases. This was a case of the latter sort.’

      One of Cornell’s recent cases involved a newly-married couple who went on honeymoon to a fifteenth-century hotel in a market town in Norfolk.

      ‘They knew nothing about the hotel, which was reputedly haunted, and they were a pragmatic pair who resolutely did not believe in ghosts. Although they were just married, they had been living together for some years. They had been given the three-night honeymoon as a surprise present from the bride’s father, and had only been told about it that day. They had no chance to learn anything about the history of the hotel,’ he said.

      The couple arrived in the evening, had dinner, and went up to their room at about nine o’clock. The door at first refused to open and they both noticed that there was a cold spot outside it. Once inside the room they felt it was cold, despite the fact that the radiators were working normally. It was a typical honeymoon room, with a four poster bed on one side and an open fireplace on the other. Above the fireplace was a piece of glass, covering and protecting an old fresco. As they settled down in bed they both noticed a luminous glow coming from one side of the fireplace. They were puzzled but not disturbed and settled down for the night.

      At about half past eleven, they heard someone pacing up and down in the corridor outside their room, then they heard the footsteps inside the room. They both got out of bed to investigate but could see nothing, although they could hear the footsteps going round the foot of the bed. Between three and four o’clock in the morning the husband woke up and saw a young girl, aged between about twelve and fifteen, with a garland of flowers in her hair. As he nudged his wife to waken her, the figure walked to the window and disappeared.

      The following day, when they mentioned their experiences to the manager of the hotel, he told them that the American guest in the room next to theirs had also had a disturbed night and had checked out of the hotel. The manager offered them a different room, but despite having by this time heard the history of the haunting, they decided they would stay where they were. The story they were told was that three hundred years previously the owner of the inn, a woman, had been having an affair with an ostler who murdered her in that room. Her daughter, who had been having an affair with the same man, threw herself off the balcony when she learned of her mother’s death.

      On the second night, they again had problems opening the door of the room, but this time the room was so hot they had to open a window. Once again, there was a luminous glow by the fireplace and again they heard footsteps both inside and outside their room. During the night the husband felt the bedclothes being pulled over his head. This happened three times.

      In the morning, the manager showed them a portrait of the owner who legend said had been murdered. The husband was shocked because he recognized her as an older version of the girl he had seen. That night they experienced the same problems opening the door to their room and saw the glowing light. On closely inspecting the room they found a hand print, the size of a child’s hand, on the inside of the glass covering the wallpainting. The glass, which was held about an inch and a half proud of the wall by a heavy wooden frame, was quite dusty on the inside and the fresh print showed up clearly.

      In the early hours of the morning, the husband again woke up and saw the same girl sitting on the end of the bed. He believed he could actually feel the depression caused by her weight. For about fifteen seconds she and he looked at each other and then she once again went to the window and disappeared. When she left, he felt the springs of the bed go up. In the morning another set of fingerprints could be seen on the glass.

      When he investigated the haunting, Tony Cornell