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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1954-03-25, Page 3Windsor Castle Has Twenty -Three Ghosts Britain with her wealth of ancient castles and centuries-old country houses, has the reputa- tion of being the most ghost- infested country in the world. Many are the books which have been written concerning this legion of earth -bound spirits; many will be written yet. Mon- astic buildings may crumble with age, or a medieval ances- tral mansion become a ram - biers' hostel, but the phantoms which haunt them linger still. Bombs have not dislodged them, nor the fire which gutted many a historic home during the years of war. If some new structure rises from the ruins of the old, it seldom deters a spirit from continuing its ten- ancy. You may or may not believe in ghosts, but sd far science has never fully explained: them, The majority of folk, espe- cially at this time of year, pre- fer to sit in an armchair by the fire and read about ghosts that Other people claim to have seen. What must be the first at- tempt at taking a census of Bri- tish ghosts was organised by a London daily newspaper a few years ago. From several hundred earefully documented stories a rough cross-section of Britain's ghost population was compiled. This census showed that "ghost density" was more or less even throughout the country, but that the country of Sussex was seem- ingly the most ghost -ridden. Among the interesting evi- dence gathered was that 'about 20 per cent of all ghosts are seen in daylight. and 30 per cent by moonlight, five per cent ap- pear (by earthly standards) to be over 40 years of age, five per cent are children, and two per cent dogs`. The census further showed that half of Britain's ghost's disappear through walls or into the ground, while the other half just vanish in mid- air. Where do ghosts walk? As one might expect, nearly all the Royal residences in Britain are credited with housing ghostly tenants. Windsor Castle, as be- fits its exalted status, heads the ]fst with the imposing total of 23 well -authenticated appari- tions. The phantom form of George III still wanders restless- ly throughout . its tapestried apartments, muttering ceaseless- ly the while. One member of the household who encountered the frightening spectre in the library never entered the room again. Those who have seen the phantom declare there is no mistaking its resemblance to the portraits of the monarch that hang within the castle. In the library. at Windsor the ghost of Queen Elizabeth I has been seen on many occasions, Her visitations have been vouched for by several Royal residents at different times. The late Empress Frederick of Ger- many has left on record in her "Memoir" experiences she had while staying at the castle. Not only did she record hav- ing seen the phantom of the Virgin Queen, but numerous well-known Elizabethan cour- tiers as well. The ghost of Charles I has been reported as having been seen on scores of occasions during the past 200 years. Much has been written of the grim ghosts of Glamis Castle, former home of the Queen Mother, at Angus. There is the famous White Lady, reputed to be the spirit of a .former Lady Glamis who was burned at the stake in the 16th century on a charge: of witchcraft. She flits about the main avenue, and on one occasion was seen by four members of the household at once. The Blue Room at Glamis would surely be a testing ground for any who profess they do not believe in the supernatural, for in this room is seen the bearded spectre. Here is one account, vouched for as absolutely authentic by the late Lord Halifax in his pri- vate "Ghost Book." The wife of an archbishop, who was a fre- quent guest at Glamis, was one night staying at another Scot- tish house. During the night she had a terrifying and very vivid dream. In this dream elle entered the Blue Room and saw, sitting by the fire, a giant of a man with a long white beard. His race was that of a dead man. That in itself is not a very remarkable happenhfg, but it is only half the story. That self- same night a daughter of Lord Castleton was occupying the Blue Room. Suddenly she awoke, and there, exactly as the dreamer had dreamed, sat the bearded spectre. A former Bishop of Brechin, the Right Rev. E. P. Forbes, was a frtquent visitor to Glamis. He had every reason to be a be- liever in . ghosts, for es saw many of the Glamis phantoms. On one occasion he arrived at the castle to find that the room he usually occupied had been earmarked for another guest, and he was offered a room in the older portion of the vast building. During the night' he was awakened by the sound of dis- mal wailing, coming from the direction of the window. Great- ly puzzled, he drew aside the curtain — and found himself face to face with a ghastly ap- parition that was less than three feet distant. Quickly he re- placed the curtain, but to his horror the phantom passed clean through it into the room and vanished through the wall at the head of his . bed. For over seventy years the ghost of a nun in a russet gown and lace -edge cap has been ap- pearing from the monk's room of the rectory at Southfleet, Kent. In a statement to the Press, the rector said that many years ago a- bishop had tried to lay the ghost, but she is still as active as ever. A "classic" among ghost stories involving clergymen le the amazing expea4ence that be- fell the Rev. Dr. Jessop, and which was published la the "Athenaeum" of 1897. Return- ing one evening from his duties among his parishioners to . his home at Mannington Hall, Nor- folk, he found a stranger seated beside the fire. Then suddenly Jessop realised that the figure was no human being, but a spirit form bearing a strong resemblance to Velas- quez' 'Dead Knight," a port- rait with which he was famil- iar. Far from retreating in ter- ror, Dr. Jessop engaged the phantom in conversation, and found it to be a well-informed ghost indeed. Suddenly the fig- ure vanished, and has been no more seen. This seems to be the only instance on record of any phantom that has been engaged by a mortal in this kind of con- versation. Then there is the ghost of Ag- nes de Rushbrooke, who was thrown into the moat and drowned by her irate husband. Since that day her moaning Old Porp Learns New Trick — When Flippy, star porpoise per- former of the Marine Studios had a spell of poor health recently, It was up to Trainer Adolf Frohn to devise a cure. He taught Flippy to swim onto a specially made stretcher•hoist when it was lowered into his tank and to lie quietly while being lifted out to receive his penicillin shot, as seen above, Flippy even became resigned to the sting of the hypodermic needle which had to pierce the half-inch layer of blubber that Iles under his skin. The sling and the medication worked and Flippy is back in shape again. Big Wheel — Seppl W!nterhaiter, an Austrian tourist in Rome, is leaving the let propulsion age to others. He's content with his grandfather's bike on which he traveled over 1000 miles from his home in Innsbruck to Italy. In the background is the 2000 -year- old Coliseum. spirit being has haunted Rush- brooke Hall, near Bury St. Ed- munds, Another famous phantom is "The Brown Lady," said to be the ghost of Dorothy, sister of Sir Robert Walpole, who may be seen rushing through that magnificent mansion. Raynham Hall. Legend has it that her ap- pearance heralds the death of some member of the family. But Britain's ghosts walk not only amid the mansions of the great and ecclesiastical build- ings. Old and historic theatres seem to fascinate them also. The Drury Lane phantom is perhaps the best-known of all theatre apparitions. He has haunted London's most famous playhouse for generations, and many are the personalities of the stage who have seen his ghostly form: No one has the faintest idea as to his identity, or what connec- tion he may have had with the stage. He is essentially a day -time ghost, for all the recorded ac- counts of his appearance are between 9. a.m. and 6 p.m. He may materialise during a ma- tinee performance or make his appearance whilst the cleaners are still at work. But no matter who sees him, descriptions al- ways tally. He is of medium height, dressed in a long grey riding - cloak fashionable in the early 1700s, and wears a powdered wig and a three -cornered hat of the same period. A sword swings at his side, and he wears high riding -boots. There is a belief at "The Lane" that the appearance of their own pet phantom before or during a production spells a successful run, for the figure never manifests itself when a failure is in the Dining. In 1936 this earthbound phan- tom stage fan was seen by 250 members of the cast of "The Dancing Years." Here is one phantom, anyway, whose ap- pearance is always welcome! Britons W i 1'ye Never Even Seen The Sea You would hardly believe in this age of swift transport and communications, that there are people living in Britain to -day who have never seen the sea, never ridden in a bus, never visited a movie. • But it's a fact! There are peo- ple in Britain living in a world of a hundred or more years ago. And they seem to be quite hap- py, thank your It was revealed during recent police investigations into the farmer John Harries and his wife, Phoebe, that in some 01 the remote Welsh valleys live quiet, pleasant folk whose customs and way of life have not changed in most ways for well over a cen- tury. Typical of these are a village trio of elderly sisters, who have never even visited then' nearest country town and show no desire to travel away from their lovely Carmarthenshire valley. None of them has ever seen e talking film; they would be scar- ed if asked to travel in a train. Talk, as I have done, to some of the coracle men who dwell and work in Welsh villages, which haven't changed much for •countless years. These men, looking like enormous tortoises, still carry light boats on their backs — boats of tarred calico and hazlewoocl — as they go down to the river for a day's fishing. Their boats are of the same de- sign as the coracles used when the Romans stalked those misty valleys. Stunning Salmon! Even the cosh -like lumps of wood carried by the fishers are no different from those carried eenturies ago. Their use? For stunning salmon: There are other parts of Brite sin where you can walk straight into the past, Until recent years there lived in a Shropshire ham- let a little old lady who had never ventured out of it in all her eighty years. She had never wanted to. On her eighty-first birthday, two younger members 01 her family succeeded in persuading her that there were some things in the great outside world worth seeing. So, with some trepidation, she consented to travel in a train (she'd never been in one before) to the seaside. And On a sunny spring day they led her gently down on to the beach at Bourne- mouth where for the first time in her life she saw the sea. She gazed and gazed at it, incredulously. Then, turning to her grandson, she said: "It is a lovely sight. But come on, my boy, it's time we were starting back 10r home again." In another se a s i de town passersby used to cast amused glances at a small, middle-aged woman who always went out shopping dressed in clothes which were already dated when Queen Victoria came to the throne. Her bonnet, her black lace dress which touched the ground, and her wasp waist were reminiscent of seventeenth -century fashions. This woman lived alone in a house which belonged to her family for 250 years. She never spoke to neighbours and it was known that she always had her evening meal by the light of flickering candles. Then one day she was missing: And nobody ever saw her after that, It was generally assumed she had walk- ed over a cliff into the sea, but her body was never found. • Even to -day there are hundreds of men and women in Britain who have never left their homes for years. Their days and nights sec spent alone in rooms whlola are sometimes dust -buried Mu- seums of the past. At the height of the 1914-18 war, the spinster lady of the manor in the Yorkshire village of Sinnington shut the gates of her mansion, pert a dusteloth over her 1914 car and retired indoors. After that hardly any of the villagers ever saw her. The yew trees grew to a great height around the mansion. The win- dows became choked with the cobwebs of years. While the nations warred or lived in restless peace, she lived alone. Until 194$, when she died and was buried in the local graveyard. Why she chose thus to live in the past was never revealed, but some villagers said her self-im- posed solitude followed the sud- den death of a man she had hoped to marry. A Northumberland man delib- erately retired to a two -roomed wooden hut in Bothal Wood be- cause he "wanted to get away from the modern world." For fifteen years he eaw nobody, never read a newspaper or lis- tened to the radio. "The old chap put the clock back 200 years," remarked a po- lice official after the recluse had been found dead in his hut, An Essex man named Mason was jilted by a girl when he was twenty. So he went to live alone with his thoughts for fifty years. The inventions of modern sci- ence, the telephone, the gramo- phone, the radio, left him indif- ferent, "He turned his back on the modern world, dismissing it with a contemptuous gesture," said a man who once knew him. Before he died, still alone, he nearly lost the faculty of speech. "LITTLE WILLIE" Willie, merry es could be, Put blasting caps In Granny's tea, Then he quoth, In manner bright, "Granny's gone 10 pieces—quite." 2 Million Homesick Chinese Dream Of Day Of Vengeance By FRED SPARKS NEA Staff Correspondent TAIPEI, Formosa — (NEA) — Almost everyone you meet here wants to go home. They have _their minds focused on China, 90 sea miles away. There are two million homesick Chinese on Formosa, soldiers, friends and followers of Genera- lissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Now, muscled by American aid, the homesick hordes think, eat, dream plan of the day they'll evict Red Dictator Mao and his Russian bankers and take up their old life in Manchurian rice pad- dies and Shanghai skyscrapers. The music of Formosa is the blues. A trip in and around Tai- pei—the capital city where the American mission's shiny station wagons honk at ox-carts—shows the fattest garrison in the Free Orient plastered on top of a sleepy, semi -tropical farmland. * * * Cement pillboxes circle Taipei, for the Communists might still try to snake -hip past the Seventh Fleet (guarding this island) to invade Formosa before Formosa can invade Red China, Chinese sentries, wearing white gloves and varnished helmets, are on constant alert. The Nationalist troopers are in magnificent physical shape—even though they sing the blues—and there's not a pot belly on the 600,000 of them. The high command demands endless exercise, with every man a pole vaulter and pusher -upper. Inter -unit competition keeps Tai- pei stadium packed daily. Four years ago, when Russian - supplied -Chinese whipped Ameri- can -supplied -Chinese, these two million homesick fled across the Straits of Formosa in history's biggest Dunkirk. * * * The U.S. turned its back on them and for a year, short of am- mo, they stood alone, watching for the Communist invasion junks Else England watched from Dover after France folded. When the Korean War began, the U.S. was again in the market for Asiatic Allies, even defeated ones, and the marriage of conven- ience was renewed. The big maproom at GHQ is nervous with officers sipping green tea and worrying about the outcome of a raid against a Com- munist mainland post. These hit- and-run raids are regular feature es to kill Communists, destroy in- stallations and let the captive peo- ple know their outside, homesick friends are tapping on the prison door — someday they'll break it open. A U.S. sergeant with a string cf hashmarks on his sleeve like a step -ladder tells me: "I'm helping train these jokers and I'll cltie you: They're good, I don't know why they got slob. bored before but I'd go anyplace with them, even Shanghai." The Japanese sat on Formosa for 50 years and the particular Chinese general I'm visiting jungles with a brass band smash- ing Oriental marches, makes his offices in a barracks that used- to house an Imperial Nipponese Regiment. In his book- case is a "History of West Point." He says: "We can greatly increase the size of our army as we get the supplies. There are plenty of young Formosans and they make good soldiers." The countryside, a thing of beauty with California style palm trees and racks of American pigs (sent her e . to increase the swine population) is dotted with posters urging farm boys, bare- foot huskies, to join the reserves. I'm told the average age of the Chinese Army here is 28, which socks the theory that this is a "wheel -chair" army. The crack First Cavalry Division, which took Manila averaged 81 years at the time of triumph. There's a big to-do at the air- strip as they greet Chinese sol- diers evacuated from Burma's These Burmese veterans will be integrated and a blueprint is ready to absorb Chinese POW's who choose freedom at Panmun- jom. The allied diplomat I talked to has been in the Orient long enough to be labeled "Old China Hand." He serves sweet-and-sour pork and fried rice instead of ham steak and french fries, and says: "Let's not kid ourselves. Gen- eral Chiang's army, rid of the weak -knees and grafters, is sur- prisingly good today. They can either fight or rot here — and they want to go home." * * * Then he adds: "But they can never do it alone, although the mainlanders are certainly sympa- thetic. At most they could dump 150,000 on the mainland beaches. The Chinese Reds would send a million and finis. "But they're .a great invest- ment for the U.S. if we want to concentrate on air and sea pow- er and let Asians fight Asians on their own soil. "How will they get home? They know how: That's why they're waiting and praying for the Third World War." New Manpower for Chinese Nationalist forces comes from the ranks of Formosan farm boys like this one who answered call Cali To Arms is sounded by recruiting posters like these which dot countryside, urging Formosa youths to join up.