Haunted Stevenage E-Book

Paul Adams

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 173

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

From unexplained sightings to the search for evidence of ghosts, this book contains a chilling range of spooky tales from Old and New Stevenage and the surrounding area. Compiled by paranormal historian Paul Adams, this collection features the restless phantom of Henry Trigg, whose coffin still hangs from the roof of a local bank; a spectral monk seen wandering the corridors of North Hertfordshire College; the mysterious apparition of Lady's Wood; and the extraordinary case of the Stevenage Poltergeist. Richly illustrated and drawing on historical and contemporary sources, Haunted Stevenage is guaranteed to make your blood run cold.

Leseprobe

For Margaret Hughes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BEFORE we begin exploring the haunted history of Stevenage I would like to take a moment to thank the following people who have helped in various ways with the research and writing of this book: my old friend Eddie Brazil, who has given his usual support and encouragement to the project as well as writing the foreword; the late Peter Underwood, for allowing me to use material and photographs from his unique archive on British ghosts and hauntings; Paul Bowes from Book Castle Publishing and author Ruth Stratton who helped with copyright issues and allowed me to quote from published sources; Richard Corbelli and Chris Body for taking the time to discuss their involvement with the case of the Stevenage Poltergeist; Damien O’Dell and Ashley Knibb, who provided material from the case files of the Anglia Paranormal Investigation Society (APIS); Clare Fleck, archivist at Knebworth House, who provided historical information as well as modern ghostly experiences; Des Turner, for allowing me to reproduce his article on ‘The Ghost of Lady’s Wood’; David Farrant, President of the British Psychic and Occult Society (BPOS), who revisited his investigation into the Minsden chapel haunting, and Andrew Fazekas and Bill King of the Luton Paranormal Society (LPS) for access to their investigation reports on Minsden; John Hope, who invited me around haunted Little Wymondley Priory; Jo Clarke and Karen Quinn, who helped with collecting new material, as did Oliver Pritchard at the Stevenage Comet; Anya Ingarfill and Francesca Bartha for showing me around the much-haunted White Lion pub; and the staff at Stevenage Central Library who allowed access to their local studies collection. I would also like to thank all those Stevenage residents who spoke with me and allowed their original experiences to be included in this book. Where requested I have used pseudonyms but the identities of all those persons who described encounters with Stevenage’s ghosts are known to me. I would also like to acknowledge Matilda Richards and Emily Locke at The History Press for seeing the project through to publication with their usual efficiency; and Bev Creagh of the Luton News for her continuing interest in my work. My children – Aban, Idris, Isa and Sakina – deserve yet another acknowledgement for their patience and inspiration; and finally Leah Mistry, who knows the reason why …

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

one

    The Lonely Ghosts of Minsden

two

    The Yellow Boy of Knebworth and Other Spectres

three

   Six Hills Hauntings and Other Ancient Places

four

   Ghosts of the Old Town

five

    The Stevenage Poltergeist

six

    New Town Hauntings and Other Strange Stories

Further Reading and Research

About the Author

Copyright

FOREWORD

GHOST – what an enigmatic word. For over 2,000 years ghosts have continued to baffle, puzzle and fascinate mankind. Yet in today’s computer- and mobile phone-obsessed world the true nature of those things that go ‘bump in the night’ still evades scientific explanation. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ghost as the ‘disembodied soul of a dead person haunting the living’. This description would conveniently fit most people’s idea of the archetypal spook: a white-sheeted phantom which walks or glides the midnight corridors of a stately mansion or a romantic castle, moaning with clanking chains, completely unaware of being observed by the trembling spectator. However, years of research by paranormal investigators have revealed that there are many different types of what we would term a ‘ghost’. They include poltergeists, crisis apparitions, ‘stone tape’ apparitions, atmospheric photographic ghosts, historical ghosts, and the curious enigma of phantasms of the living. All have their own peculiarities and ways of manifesting their presence or energy. If they all have one thing in common it is their rejection by established science as amounting to proof of an afterlife, being looked upon as preternatural phenomena which will eventually be shown, by scientific means, to have a rational and logical explanation.

In 1882, a group of academics and eminent thinkers established the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) with the express purpose of scientifically investigating ghosts, haunted houses and the claims of mediums and psychics to be able to contact the dead. Over one hundred years on, even though our understanding of certain aspects of the paranormal have become clearer, the question still remains, do ghosts exist and if so what are they? Can mediums communicate with those who have passed on? Are poltergeists really spirit ‘entities’, or are the movements of objects and furniture in poltergeist hauntings the manifestation of externalised stress and frustration of adolescents? Is it places or people which are haunted, or is it, as many sceptics would have us believe, all nonsense?

It would appear that the quest and need for answers to a phenomenon which has mystified generations since the first account of a haunted house was described by Pliny the Younger in Greece twenty centuries ago still continues today. Throughout human history paranormal phenomena has been reported from almost every country on earth, by people of every race, creed and colour. Reports of hauntings and poltergeists regularly make the pages of the tabloids, yet despite years of research by dedicated investigators and the accumulation of mountains of compelling evidence, many people continue to scoff at the idea of ghosts. Quantative evidence is acceptable in the disciplines of medicine or physics; yet it does not seem to be satisfactory to many people in regard to the subject of ghosts. Perhaps there is a reason for this.

Today most people’s perception and idea of ghosts stems from the reaction of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Romantics against the advances made in science and the Age of Rationalism. The Romantics’ response against forward-thinking philosophies, unleashed firstly by the Renaissance and the Reformation, and subsequently by ideas and values which were fuelled by advances in knowledge, was to retreat into the world of the imagination. Education and technology had freed Man’s mind from the tyranny of ignorance, but spiritually had left him with nowhere to go. Rationalism had robbed him of his mystical safe haven, and the needs of a changing world cast him into an industrial hell hole from which the only escape was the mind. As a rebuff to the cold hard reality of science, the writers of the period – such as Horace Walpole, William Beckford, Mathew Lewis and Ann Radcliff – populated their Gothic novels with ghosts, monsters and fantastical creatures which lurked and roamed within ruined abbeys, labyrinthine castles, dripping dungeons and moonlit graveyards. Supernatural fiction was the antidote to the banality of everyday existence and the fear that science would destroy Man’s need for the supernatural. But, of course, the fictional ghost and those things which genuinely do go ‘bump in the night’ are two completely different things.

Ironically, 200 years on from the Romantics’ hatred of science and rejection of the Age of Reason, modern-day scientists have moved that bit closer to establishing that ghosts, far from being romantic delusions or ‘all in the mind’ may well represent evidence of the survival of the human personality, albeit in the form of a psychic recording. If there is any truth to the ‘stone tape’ theory – that physical surroundings can absorb an impression of violent or tragic events and later, under a combination of circumstances or conditions and with the right person present, play back these recordings – one would certainly expect it to apply to many of the paranormal accounts contained in this book. For here the reader will encounter headless ghosts, phantom monks, violent poltergeists, spectral hounds, as well as invisible entities and ghostly children. Some may well be stone tape apparitions; others possibly historical photographic ghosts, atmospheric phantoms or elemental spirits. In some cases the incidents may well be a case of an overactive imagination. Only research and study will eventually help us understand the enigma of ghosts and reveal their true nature, for paranormal investigation is a journey of discovery and I can think of no one better qualified to guide the reader on an exploration of haunted Stevenage than the author of this book, paranormal historian, Paul Adams. I have known Paul for over ten years since we first met at Borley in Essex in September 2003 and to date we have co-authored three books on paranormal subjects together.

I suspect the majority of the readers of this book will have no trouble in accepting that the strange and curious incidents and accounts contained within represent genuine paranormal phenomena. There will also be those readers who, with open minds and an enquiring curiosity, will want to know more about the subject, as well as the sceptics who with wry smiles may chance to browse its pages. To all these readers I recommend that you draw the curtains, turn down the lights, check under the bed or behind the sofa, and let Paul Adams introduce you to the spooks, phantoms and ghosts of Haunted Stevenage.

Eddie Brazil

High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

2015

INTRODUCTION

THIS is the first book devoted entirely to the ghosts and hauntings of Stevenage. Stevenage has featured in a number of other previous volumes by various authors concerned with the subject of the paranormal in the County of Hertfordshire but none have interested themselves completely with the accounts of strange and inexplicable happenings – both historic and modern – that have been recorded here over the course of many years. When I was asked to write this book I quickly realised that here was an opportunity to explore an aspect of the paranormal that has interested me personally for a long time, namely that ghosts can appear not only to the inhabitants of traditional locations such as old houses and stately homes, but also to ordinary people in modern dwellings and settings that have no previous history of hauntings or similar phenomena.

Today there has been an enormous surge of interest in the subject of the paranormal, fuelled over the past decade by the popularity of a number of reality television programmes on terrestrial as well as satellite and cable TV. The first of these, Most Haunted, which first aired in May 2002 and initially survived fourteen series over eight years, including several sensational live specials and spin-off programmes, brought the subject of ghost hunting and paranormal investigation to the attention of many ordinary people for the first time. However, despite the popularisation, what remains clear is that many people from all walks of life claim to have had paranormal experiences, often those who have no particular or continuing interest in the subject, the most common and familiar of these being encounters with ghosts and apparitions.

In his foreword, Ed Brazil has touched on some of the categories of ghost and hauntings that over time have become generally accepted by investigators as forming a framework into which many paranormal experiences seem to fall. One of these, the so-called ‘stone tape’, seems to explain why some apparitions appear to behave as though they are some kind of paranormal replay of past events that have somehow become imprinted on their surroundings and can, in the presence of a certain percentage of the population – those with some kind of psychic gift or insight – be seen and experienced again. This kind of haunting is most often associated with buildings or structures of great age, where the cumulative emotions and events of a particular location seem to build up over time.

The Old Town High Street, Stevenage. (Paul Adams)

Stevenage, for the superficial visitor a modern ‘new town’, has a long and enviable connection with significant events in the evolving history of this country. And history and ghosts are in many ways one and the same thing. This goes back to Roman times with the town’s strategic position within a day’s march of the three most important centres created by the occupying Roman forces: Londinium (London), Verulamium (present-day St Albans), and Camulodunum (Colchester). The Romans’ vast north–south highway from the Cripplegate fort in the south passed through the area we now know as Stevenage, joining another Roman road which ran from Verulamium in the south to present-day Baldock. In later times, a Saxon village was established where the church of St Nicholas stands today whose name (derived as has been suggested by historians from the generic phrase ‘At the strong oak’ or ‘strong gate’) was eventually stabilised between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries as ‘Stivenhatch’ and later ‘Stivenach’. The prosperity that Stevenage achieved during the days of stagecoach travel along the Great North Road is evident in the many surviving inns and notable buildings that line the beautiful old High Street. In 1946, Stevenage’s designation as a ‘New Town’ under the County of London Plan drawn up by the then Attlee Government, inaugurated a new era of the town’s history. All of these events have in some way affected the psychic fabric of the region and result in the stories and encounters that you are about to read – researched either from existing records and accounts, or personally told to me by the people who experienced them and published for the first time.

Some of Stevenage’s haunted places are well known to ghost hunters and aficionados of the supernatural. I have visited the delightful Minsden chapel on many occasions and its closeness to the town made it one location that without question deserved to be included. Also Knebworth House has a unique connection and association with the history of the paranormal that would have been conspicuous by its absence, while the coffin of Henry Trigg and its associated ghost stories have made it the town’s most familiar and immediate icon of the macabre. However, the New Town hauntings are the ones that have interested me the most and prove that wherever you are, the world of the unseen is always close at hand.

No regional ghost book can ever claim to be complete. As old hauntings fade away, new ghosts are constantly being seen, convincing cases of haunting are always occurring and previously unreported accounts of supernormal activity gradually come into the public domain. I hope that this book will encourage this tradition of reporting to continue. I am always interested in collecting details of new experiences or learning further information on any of the cases and hauntings included in this book, either for a future edition or a sequel volume – readers are welcome to contact me in confidence through my website.

The Queensway Clock Tower, commemorating the completion of the first phase of the New Town development in 1959. (Paul Adams)

It only leaves me to say that I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have researching and writing it.

Paul Adams

Luton, Bedfordshire

2015

1

THE LONELY GHOSTS OF MINSDEN

The History of a Ruin

Just under 2½ miles west of Stevenage town centre, close to the old B656 London Road, lies one of Hertfordshire’s most enigmatic haunted sites, the lonely chapel of St Nicholas, a flint and rubble ruin now in an advanced state of decay. According to most accounts, Minsden chapel was built sometime in the early fourteenth century but fell into disuse around 1675, although marriages were occasionally held there for a further sixty years after that date. In 1690, the lead roof was stripped by thieves and the three chapel bells were also stolen in 1725. The last recorded wedding took place on 11 July 1738 when Enoch West and Mary Horn exchanged their vows in the now roofless building. It was on this occasion that a piece of falling masonry knocked the prayer book from the parson’s hand, after which the Bishop of Lincoln closed the chapel for good, consigning Minsden to decades of neglect and decay. Today only the heavily eroded outer walls remain, hidden amongst trees on the edge of neighbouring farmland.

Minsden chapel, drawn by an unnamed artist in the Victorian era. The building has been a ruin for many years. (Peter Underwood Collection/Paul Adams)

Minsden has enjoyed a haunted reputation stretching back many years but when this actually first became established is unclear. In the early 1900s a local photographer, T.W. Latchmore, visited the ruins and succeeded in capturing the figure of a hooded and sheeted apparition framed in one of the crumbling archways. Now something of an iconic image, this ‘ghost’ photograph is an undoubted fake and has done much to perpetuate the legend of a ghostly monk at Minsden over the years. According to the late Tony Broughall in his book Two Haunted Counties (2010), the appearance of the ghostly monk is heralded by the tolling of the stolen bells of Minsden. ‘As the sounds fade away,’ Broughall notes, ‘the apparition of the monk appears beneath the arch on the south side of the ruins. Walking with head bowed in reverence, the figure enters the chapel’s roofless shell and proceeds to climb invisible stairs to a long-since vanished bell tower where he disappears. A few minutes later, the sounds of beautiful yet wistful music is briefly heard before all is silent again.’

The famous Minsden chapel ‘ghost’, photographed by T.W. Latchmore in the early 1900s. (Author’s collection)

As well as its phantom nun, there is a tradition that an early benefactor, known as Dame Margerie, who lived near Minsden in the 1300s, returns to the chapel from time to time, while the apparition of a small boy playing a flute is said to have been seen playing near the chapel by a visitor in the mid-1980s. There are also unsubstantiated stories connecting the site to the murder of a local nun and the existence of a lost tunnel running under and away from the ruins. Despite these colourful evocations, many visitors to the ruins claim to have experienced strange happenings and a number of psychic investigators have reported instances of alleged phenomena to the point that it would be unwise to simply dismiss the Minsden ghosts out of hand.

Early Investigations and Phenomena

In the late 1940s, Peter Underwood (1923–2014), the future President of the Ghost Club, then a young and upcoming paranormal researcher, conducted an all-night vigil at Minsden on All Hallows’ Eve in the company of two equally enthusiastic local ghost hunters, Tom Brown, from nearby Weston and Derek Clark from Underwood’s home town of Letchworth. A few days before, in preparation for their investigation, Underwood together with his brother John and accompanied by Tom Brown, had visited the ruins in daylight. On this occasion both Peter Underwood and Tom Brown heard what they were convinced was a distinct snatch of ‘strangely fascinating’ music; John Underwood, two steps behind his brother, heard nothing. There were no other visitors and the chapel’s remote location makes it unlikely that the sounds came from a nearby house or passing car. On 31 October 1947, the ghost hunters returned to the lonely Minsden chapel. During the course of their vigil a strange incident took place, as Underwood’s original notes, reproduced here for the first time, describe:

Two rare photographs from the Peter Underwood investigation of Minsden in the late 1940s. John Underwood examines the chapel ruins and (above) Peter Underwood points out the spot where a luminous cross appeared on the stonework during a vigil held on 31 October 1947. (Peter Underwood Collection/Paul Adams)

Arrived 11.45.

Circled ruins looking for possible tramps, poachers etc.

Entered ruins & watched closely as ‘the witching hour’ passed. Continued wandering round ruins until 1.0am (Summer Time was in operation) when we hoped to witness some phenomena.

Nothing happened at 1.0am and we continued quietly walking round ruins until 1.45 when I saw a white cross which seemed to glow with unnatural brightness for a few seconds, then faded, only to reappear a few seconds later. It continued fading & reappearing for several minutes.

Both Mr Clark and Mr Brown saw the cross as well as myself.

It was a ‘crux decussata’ or Latin Cross and appeared on what had originally been part of the walls of the chapel.

It could possibly have been some trick of the moonlight, as a full moon was shining down on the ruins through the trees, though had it been anything to do with the branches one would have thought the cross would have been black and white.

The investigators eventually left the ruins at 2.45 a.m. ‘Never have I felt so certain that a place was haunted as I stood among those silent crumbling ruins,’ Underwood noted in an article written for the paranormal-themed World Service journal in March 1949. ‘A doorway at the east end I found much colder than the rest of the ruins.’ Peter Underwood also included an account of his Minsden ghost hunt in his autobiography No Common Task