#$#ffid&ffiff,

Ghost and Ghoul

This is a series of personal experiences examined as if they wereproblems in detection. The aurhor, who for many yearsconducted archaeological investigations on behalf of thecambridge Antiquarian Society and the University Museum ofArchaeology and Ethnology, tells of some of the paranormaloccurrences which have come his way and then pults the tales topieces in an endeavour to find out the meaning of each one. Hecomes to the conclusion that there is no such thing as the super-natural. Everything must conform to natural laws; althoughsome of these laws remain to be discovered and formulated. H.also suggests that there is another natural force, comparableperhaps to electro-magnetism, which is ai yet almost unsiudied,and finally he puts forward some possible hypotheses to accountfor the phenomena as they are at present understood.'Here is a new conception of the varidity of the belief in thesurvival of the personality after the death of the body. It makesthe scepticism of the so-called rationalists look very old-fashioned.'-RlcHAnp Cnuncw, Eoening Standard

coaer designed by Andrew Young andJohn Gibbs. printed in Great Britain.

GHOST AND GHOUL

By tlu sarne Autlnr

GOGMAGOG: THE BURIED GODS

GH{OSTAI{D

GH{OULby

T. C. LETHBRIDGE

Routledge and Kegan PaulLONDON

First published 196rby Routledge d Kegan Paul Ltd

Broadway House, 6B-Z+ Carter LaneLondon, E.C.+

Printed in Great Britain by offset lithographyby Billing d Sons Limited

Guildford and London

@ ".

C. Lethbridge rg6t

No part of this book may be rEroducedin any form without permis$on fromthe publisher, except for the quotation

of brief passages in criticismSecond impression tg67

page ixI

27

PrefaceChapterChapterChapterChapterChapterChapterChapterChapterChapterChapterIndex

Contents

OneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTen

98485676

lo9lr8t28r50r55

l. Diagram of occurrence2. Sketch of Hole Mill3. General impression of

Mill, 19594. Diagram to illustrate

ghost formation

Figures

in Cambridge, tgsg ?agefigure seen at HoIe

possible sequence in

25

5. Sketch of anchorage in the Shiant Islands6. Diagram to show how a child mlght obtain a

picture of a ghost7. Sketch of the monastery on Skellig Michael8. Diagram of part of the house with the .ghoul,

on the stairs9. Evidence for belief in a future life amongBritons 57lo. Steqs taken-ty Romano-Britons to prevent

ghosts walking ' 68I t. Romano-British belief in magic: magician,s

wand1e,. Sketches of Bronze Age witch-doctors, tools19. Diagram of a 'witchJoctor's' grave14. Psychometric drawingsI5. Diagram to illustrate the apparent mechanism

of psychometry16. Sketch of the place where Ingolfr is said to

have killed the British slaveit7. Errly Celtic crossest8. Sketch of Reykjavik

the long j.tty harbour showing part of 84vii

t2t4

2580

42

60626966

73

7882

of Passat24. Botanical examPle of curves25. Distant view of Sgor nam

Canna26. Influence of ocean voYaging

94l07

Ban-naomha on

on Irish artr38140

FI GURES

19. Thirteenth-fourteenth-century medievalobjects Page 87

20. Sketch from the anchorage at the head ofLoch Kentra 89

21. Sketch of the Cailleach Point from the Shiananchorage 9l

22. Herring-curer's hulk, I*na, moored in CastleBay, Isle of Barra 92

23. Looking down from the upper fore-topsail

Preface

For a number of years I have been working on the confused anddifficult subject of the ancient gods of Britain. In the course ofthis work it occurred to me to wonder why there had been anybeliefs in gods at all. One is told that the forces of nature are soimpressive that primitive mankind was compelled to believein the existence of Beings greater than himself and that thesepowers of nature became his gods. The natural in fact evokeda supposed supernatural. Somehow this did not seem to me tobe a probable answer. It seems much more reasonable to suppose that the occurrences outside the ordinary run of everydayaffairs were responsible for the surmise that invisible and some-times visible spirits existed and that the greater of these becamethe gods. The ghost and the poltergeist have always beenknown. What was thunder and lightning but a poltergeist on agreater scale ?

This book is the result of an entirely personal investigationinto these unusual occurrences. It might be called 'Ghosts whichhave confronted an archaeologist', or something of that kind;for it so happens that I seem more prone to bump into unusualexperiences than do the majority of my friends and acquain-tances. It is no longer taboo to admit this, fortturately, for ofrecent years this kind of study has become respectable and ithas been shown that many of the phenomena are capable ofscientific proof. E.S.P., which stands for Extra Sensory Per-ception, is being studied in laboratories on both sides of theAtlantic and the stigma of being interested in such things hasgone the way of that which once rested on the chemist, oristronomer. It is the man who does not believe in such thingswho is now a touch old-fashioned, and not the believer who isregarded as being superstitious.

txvtu

PREFACEThe book is really only a by-product of my research work on

the old pagT gods of Britain; but in the courr" of this study, Ihave been forced to consider what was really at the back ofpagan religion, and from that I had to study magic and super-stition. I have read a great many works on these subjects ando3 the religions of the East; as well as what can be gleaned fromthose about the ancient Classical beliefs. From thi-s, of course,it is but u t"p to the modern theories on these subjects, RaynorJohnson, Aldous Huxley, Professor Joad, Air-Marshal rio*-ding and the rest, as well as those of such Eastem writers asIosT*da and Meher Baba. Durinp; all this reading, someideas began to solidify in my mind, ana it seemed to he thatint_eresting and even perhaps useful results might be obtainedif I used mysel.f as my own guinea-pig for thJ study of suchunusual happenings as have come my way.I have-enj9ygd one great advaniage b',r". many of my con-temporaries. It has never been necessary for me to stick iloselyto one line of study and thus work it to death. There ul*uy,has been time elough to gain at least a passing acquaintanlewith qqbjects other than archaeology, with *[i.h for **yyears I have been mostly concerned. Although I studied Naturaisciences at cambridge, which resulted in ien years of almostcomplete lack of interest in natural history it then became againfor me. quite as interesting to watch a peregrine falcon stoo! ata- plssing pigeon, or a hermit crab emerge from its borroiedshell in a rock pool, as to recover some unusual and long-forgotten piece of information from the earth. Although thTsmay well have led to my becoming a 'jack of all trad"es andmaster of none', it has nevertheless provided me with a greatltore of experience, with some of which I at times borl myfriends.

Much that is set down here is taken directly from my oldnote-books. Some of these have not been looked at again-sincethe^dar when t!"I were written and it has been quite Jurprisingto find how much I had recorded. It is, however, tim" that t aiisomething ab-out it before the books are lost and I forget thingswhic-h are only stored in my memory.

There is one -further point which I must emphasize before

coming to the ghosts themselves. It is this: all &e ideas whichI have expressed are tentative. They are theories, which mayx

PREFACE

work, or may not work. Whatever happens they must not beregarded as more than that. When I see flaws in them, I shallhave no hesitation in changing them myself. The last thing Iwish to do is to foist dogma on my readers. Dogma is the curseof learning and very often is the ruin of religion also. Whenyou hear someone say, 'Such and such a thing must be rightbecause so-and-so says it is', you can be pretty safe in thinkingthat there is considerable doubt about the matter. We all ofus really know very little indeed. Scientific thought is in themelting-pot and nobody can really forecast what will come outof the brew. But anything which can stimulate others to thinkthings out for themselves must be of some value. There is aGaelic proverb which says, 'Two heads are better than one,even if they are sheep's heads.' The more heads that can be gotto take an interest in this subject, the larger is the chance thatsomething important will be discovered.

My wife has been a great help in this piece of research, notonly by typing out the results, but by pushing books under mynose, which would otherwise never have poked into them. How-ever, I do not intend to involve her or anyone else in the con-clusions. As Rafn the Red said to Earl Sigurd at the battle ofClontarf, 'Bear your own devil yourself.'

T.C.L.

,(I

Chapter One

\ZOU often hear people remark, 'If I saw a ghost, I think II should die of fright.' This is not the case at all. On twooccasions I have clearly seen figures of people who were notreally there, in the ordinary sense, at all. On neither occasiondid I appreciate till later that there was anything strange inwhat I had seen.

As I was going up the stair,I met a m,ut who was not there.

He was not there again today,Oh, how I wish he'd go away.

(I do not know where that comes from, but I like it!)The first incident happened in tgZQ, in New Court, Trinity,

Cambridge. I had rooms in the block which faces the Backs andmy stair was the first on the left of the gateway as you go outtowards the river. On the next stair to mine, again on the left,a friend of mine, G.W., had his rooms, two floors up. They werea set of rooms which were said to have been occupied by genera-tions of Buxtons, but, as there were no Buxtons in the collegeat the time, G.W. had them. The rooms were on the left ofthe stair. I am putting in these details in case any later occu-pant of the rooms has had the same experience.

G.W. and I had not been model undergraduates. I regret tosay that we thought far more about shooting, fishing, sailingand the like, than about cutting up dog-fish or wading throughtext-books. Later in the same year, G.W. was one of the partyon the Shiant Islands. We were, I suppose, about the last batchof young men who went to a university simply to finish theireducation and make friends. I was actually diverted from theArmy and sent up to Cambridge at the end of the Kaiser's war,

I

GHOST AND GHOULbecause everyone thought there would never be a war againand training for it was useless. I did not even know you weresupposed to get a degree until I got up to the place. A gooddegree was no lure to us at all. In fact lectures were a boreafter years of school.

IiS. t. Diagram of occurrence in New Court, Trinity, Cambridge,in t92,2. Not to scale.(A) Unknown man in top hat.(B) G.W., still seated by the fire.(C) Myself, going back to my own rooms.

There were more chairs in the room and the bookcase may not bein the right place.

I was sitting rather late one evening in G.W.'s rooms. Wewere discussing this and that in a desultory sort of willr one oneach side of the fire. I was in the chair nearest the window,which looked over the court. Between me and the door in theopposite cofner of the room was a square dining-table. Noti-cing that it was nearly midnight, I got up from my chair and wasabo_ut to go back to bed. As I got up, and before I had said goodnight to G.W., the door opened and a man came into the room.G.W. remained sitting in his chair. The man, who had a top

2

GHOST AND GHOULhat on, came only a few steps into the room and there stopped,resting both his hands on the table. I thought he was a collegeporter who wanted to say something to G.W. I said, 'Well,good night, G.W.'and'Good evening'to the other man, whodid not repiy. Tircn I walked round behind the figure standingat the table, through the door, ffid down the stairs into thecourt. I went up the next stair to my own rooms and into bedwithout giving the incident another thought.

Next morning, I met G.W. in Trinity Street. Rememberingthe visitor of the night before, I said, 'Hello, G.W. Why Cidthe porter come in last night ? We weren't making a row oranything.' 'Nobody came in,' he replied. I found this statementquite impossible to believe and we argued a bit in the street.But G.W. had not seen the man and I had and that was all thatcould be said about it. When I had time to think it over, I foundI could remember the man's appearance in considerable detail.He was not very tall and he was slight. His face was ratherpointed. He did not resemble any of our porters I could remenl-ber. Then I thought of something else: he had on a top hat. Ourporters wore top hats, but they only wore them on Sundays.That evening had not been a Sunday. More than that, I foundI could distinctly remember that he had something white at histhroat and not a black tie. Then I got it. This was a man inhunting kit. G.W. had not seen him at all. He was a ghost.

But that does not postulate that he was a visitor from anotherworld. He could have been a thought projection from any un-known source. G.W. may have projected him. Someone nrayhave projected himself while sitting sleepily in a chair in aLondon club. He may have been one of the countless Buxtons.Anything may have caused him to be there; but I happened tobe on the right wave-length to receive the picture. It was justlike a television picture without the sound. There was nocolour and it was as utterly without feeling as a television shot.But it was full size. There was nothing, of course, about a mandressed in black and white to show as colour. Nevertheless, Ido not think there was any colour in his face.

Of course one might see hundreds of ghosts of this sort with-out realizing that they are not actual living people. One doesnot go about touching people in the street to see if they arereally there. But, as far as I am aware, I never saw another ghost

I

GHOST AND GHOULtill the 22nd February 1959. Here in this combe, it was hot anddry for the time of year. The temperature at Exeter reached60o at midday and must have been much the same here. Therewas no wind, or so little that it could only be described as 'lightairs'. Our water at Hole is pumped by a ram, and on this parti-cular Sunday morning the ram stopped. The house stands atabout 3oo feet and the ram is nearly l5O feet lower down thesteep side of the combe and some 3oo yards away. Directlybelow us, at about l5o-foot level, is Hole Mill, which was once,like the smithy, which is now a cottage, part of the Hole estate.In the 189os, when the estate was broken up, it comprised sevenhill farms and some two miles of clifttop. Hole MilI belongs toMrs. N., who has considerable and unusual faculties of extra-sensory perception.

Our ram having stopped pumping, it was necessary to startit again. My wife and I, accompanied by her black cat, whichfollows like a dog, but makes more noise about it, complainingall the time, walked down the hill away from the direction ofHole MiIl and started the ram again. The morning was sounusually lovely that we sat on the concrete roof of the ram'shouse and admired the quiet view. The cat, according to custom,sat looking in the opposite direction, ignoring us. A small river,with no name today, but probably once called the Bran, ranbelow us, having passed Hole Mill, which was almost out ofsight in the next field. At ll.l5 a.m. my wife said she mustput the Sunday joint in the oven. I said I would rvait anotherquarter of an hour to see that the ram did not stop again. Shesaid she would come to meet me on my way back and that I wasto remember everything of interest I happened to see and reportit to her. She then departed up the hill accompanied by the cat,which was complaining loudly as usual.

As it happened, I did not sit out my full fifteen minutes. Forsome five minutes I sat in the sun, seeing nothing more re-markable than a wheeling buzzard. Then, over the dividinghedge I saw a man, in the next field and at the bottom of thecombe, walking backwards and forwards in a strange manner.As it was my field and I could not tell who he was, nor guesswhat he was doing, I had to get up out of sheer curiosity. Iwalked up the hill to a gate in the hedge, and through this intothe next field where Hole Mill stands. I was then above the

4

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GHOST AND GHOULpaid much attention to that, for John at that time was new tous and had not yet become the faithful old friend of later years.

W.S.B., however, unknown to us, remained firm in his be-lief that he had been robbed by the sith. so much so that nearlythirty years later he joined our boat at Dunvegarr in Skye anclinsisted on being taken back to the shiants. we managed togetthere on the *th August 195t, md watched him set outa bait for the fairies. He had nothing to report when he returnedand we sailed again for South Rona, Old John slapping the boat'srail and blessing the Sith for the fine breeze they sent us. SouthRona happens to b" the scene of the second incident. The islandis very different frorn the grassy Shiants, being much brokenup by gullies and to a large extent covered with thick heather.On the northern shore of the harbour, however, there had beena plantation of trees and their remains still stood here andthere on rocky rises with boggy gullies between. Walking onthis part of South Rona is very rough.

On the QSrd June t9q4 I was walking along this northshore of the harbour, when I put up a woodcock, which flewaway out over the harbour and landed somewhere on theheathery hill to the eastward. It rose close to my feet andnoticing that it was flying rather laboriously, I pulled out myfield-glasses and watched it. There was no doubt at all thitthere was a flutry brown object beneath it. It seemed to becarrying this in much the same way that a hawk caries itsprey. I could see no trailing legs.

For many years there was a controversy among sportsmenand naturalists as to whether woodcock did in fact carry theirchicks from place to place in the air. To this was added thequestion of, if they did it, how was it done ? Did they carrythe chicks on their backs or between their thighs ? In spite ofthe testimony of many trained observers, gamekeepers and thelike, some authorities refused to believe that woodcock evercarried their young at all. Whether this controversy has everbeen settled, I do not know. But I do know that I watched awoodcock carrying something, which looked like a fluE chick,across the harbour at South Rona on the z+th June tgz+. AndI do know that this object was not on its back. Nevertheless,I have never found a professional naturalist who appeared tobelieve me.

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E,:

GHOST AND GHOULAt the time of this incident, I was looking for prehistoric

sites on the island and had no thought of woodcock in my mind.The whole thing was a complete surprise to me and it wasonly when writing up my log that evening that I realized I hadheard ofthis controversy and even read articles about it.

Now my testimony on this matter is on a par with W.S.B.'sexperience on the Shiant Islarrds and I see now how wrong weall were to laugh at his statement. It is not the observers whoare at fault, it is the attitude of mind of the people who thinkthey know better. Above all there is the mental refusal, equiva-lent to religious bigotry, to accept anything which they havenot seen themselves and which contradicts what th"y have beentaught. This attitude is entirely contrary to anything scientific.The naturalist who refuses even to investigate the numerouseyewitnesses' reports of such things as the monsters in LochNess, or Shiel, or Morar is no scientist. He is relying on abelief he has formed from published works by one lot of people,without testing for himself the contrary opinion of another lotequally worthy of belief. If he will not test the matter himself,and yet sticks to his opinion that there czul be no such pheno-menon, he is no scientist, but simply a dogmatic pedant. Wewere all much at fault in not taking W.S.B.'s report seriously.We ought to have tested the matter to the best of our abilityinstead of sailing off to Tarbert Hamis for a pint of beer. Ibelieve two of us did return with him to the place where he putdown his coat, but that was all.; Of course four of us had been trained, or were being trained,in a rigid school of scientific thought, in which there was noplace for what was called the supernatural. But the supernaturalof one generation becomes the natural of the next one. When,in the previous year, two of us had been climbing the southernmountain peaks of Jan Mayen, we had seen from one ridge twomonstrous grey figures in the fog on the next one. In earlierages these figures would undoubtedly have been taken for thoseof giants, supernatural beings of huge size. To us they were butshadows'of ourselves. We knew how the 'Brocken Spectre'was produced. It seems reasonably clear that there is no suchthing as supernatural. All phenomena classed under the head-ing are natural phenomena, governed by natural laws, but theselaws have as yet to be worked out.

l6

GHOST AND GHOULIf we look on this affair of the Shiants from this point of view,

there is clearly a problem to be solved. W.S.B. experiencedsomething unusual on the hill-top. I have no photograph of thetop of the island, but the figure, which I have drawn from asketch I made in my note-book next day, gives some idea of thenature of the place. The top of the island is covered with grass,bitten short by sheep. These are brought from Tarbert and left tofend for themselves, for nobody lives there permanently now.The last couple are said to have left after watching all day thebody of their child washing about in the breakers following afall from the cliff. At intervals smooth grey rocks break thesurface on the hill-top. The ground is not particularly unevenand one rock may look very like another. But W.S.B. wasalready an experienced traveller and naturalist. It is most unlikelythat he did not fix the position before he put down his coat andlunch. We can reasonably rule out the explanation that hesimply put the things down and forgot where he had done so.The second explanation, that the objects were removed by gulls,is even more improbable. No bird is likely to have carried offa complete mackintosh and few birds are brave enough to inter-fere with a paper-covered package on a lonely hill. I have oftenput a piece of white paper over game to prevent it beingmolested. It is a well-known protection used by men on the hill.It looks very much as if the gulls cannot provide the explana-tion. The top of the hill is exposed to all the winds of theMinch. From it there is a fine panorama of hills and islands,from Uist to the Harris hiils. From Harris to Suilven and [,ochInver and so rowrd to the Red Hills and Cuillens on Skye. ButI have a note in my log-book that it was a fine morning and nota windy day. The missing objects were not blown away. If theobjects were put down beside the rock they would have re-mained there.

It looks very much as if no everyday explanation can accountfor this phenomena. But it is by no means an isolated case ofits kind. There are numerous recorded instances of objectsvanishing in unexplained circumstances. These cases are usuallyobserved inside houses and are a well-known phenomenon tothose who study parapsychoiogy, the recent and respectablename for psychical research. They belong to the poltergeist classof.happenings and the force which is supposed to move them is

t7

GHOST AND GHOULknown as psychokinesis. I shall use these ponderous terms aslittle as possible. Sometimes, we are told, things vanish. Atother times things appear from nowhere. They are technicallyknown as 'apports'. It is recorded that newly arrived apportsare often hot to the touch. A good summary of this kind ofhappening is to be found in Dr. Raynor Johnson's The ImprisonedSplendour, a book moreover written by a well-known physicist.

At it happens, I have once seen the arrival of an apport, inthe prosaic surroundings of the tea-room of the Museum ofArchaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge. There were severalof us standing round the walls of the room, drinking tea andchatting. There was an open space of concrete floor, perhapseight feet across, in the middle of this gathering. Suddenly, ata moment when nobody happened to be talking much, there wasa little tinkle and a small brass curtain ring arrived in the middleof the floor. Nobody had thrown it there; they were not thekind of people who would do so. It just arrived. There was noexplanation. Miss R. was one of the people who observed thiscurious little incident. I heard her remark, half to herself, 'It'sthe poltergeist again.' Nobody else took any interest. Theywent on with their serious conversations before hurrying awaytogivetheirlectures or whatever else they had to do. Miss R. andI picked up the ring. It was an absolutely ordinary small curtainring, somewhat tarnished. It would have been less remarkablehad it been a Roman finger ring or a Saxon brooch.

I asked what the previous poltergeist happenings had been.Apparently there was a human skull which kept jumping offshelves and tables, and objects had been moving about in themuseum cases. But the phenomena did not take a violent formand did not last very long.

W.S.B.'s experience with his coat and lunch appears then tohavebeen an apport of the opposite kind. We do not know how ithappened, but lve can classify it and this is often the beginningof learning.

There are m,my speculations we might make. Why were theislands named after the Sith, these mysterious people whosename is pronounced Shee and who are translated as fairies inEnglish ? John M. Robertson was a firm believer in the Sith.Had not an ancestor of his captured one while it was milking ahind with a hobble fastened round its legs I To obtain his

l8

GHOST AND GHOULrelease, the little man presented John's ancestor with the hobbleand_ a promise that he should never miss anything he aimed atwith his gun. The story went on to say how-the rian, evidentlyan inveterate poacher, was once caught. He was told he *oulibe forgiven if he could hit a goose which was feeding in themiddle of a herd of cows. The bird was masked by coir on allsides, but the poacher shot it through the ear of one of them.He caried the hobble sewn up inside his'vest'(coatl) till thed1v 9f his death when it vanished. so, if this story can betrusted,which I greatly doubt, the sith can make things vanish. oljJohn not only believed that the islands were nimed after thesith, but that t!"y were still in occupation of the place. It wasno surprise to him, sitting in the sun on the forecastle of theboat, to hear that the coat and lunch had gone. It was only tobe expected in a place of this kind.

I do not think myself that the shiant Islands were namedafter the sith, but after a sea god of the Lewis, whose appella-tion has come down to us as shoney. This would not have- beenhis real name, which presumably might not be mentioned, butw_as only something like sithanaidh, the Holy one. He wasoffered an annual libation of beer by the men of northern Lewisin the hope that he would send bounteous food supplies fromthc sea and land. I take shoney to have been orr" bl the BlueMen of the Minch, who some ciaim to have seen, and probablythe husband of the Cailleach, the Highland Diana.

The flat plain to the westward of the shiants, which wasprobably what is known as the Five Foot Raised Beach, hasnow been almost washed right away, for there has been a riseof at least six feet in the mean sea-level since Roman times.Had any temple to shone], such as a stone circle, once existed,it was probably sited on this Raised Beach and has long sincegonc. After an absence of thirty years, I noticedalotof dif"r"r,."on the western side of the lslands. Quite a lot more land hadg!r1e under the sea. But who were the sith i This is a problemwhich has puzzled many people who, like myself, are alwaysnearching for the answers to comparatively us"l"ss questions.

one of the difficulties in answering the question is rooted inthc nreaning of words. The word sith, or fairy for that matter,nleans one thing to one person and something quite differentto another. There are many varieties of meaning ind there are

GHOST AND GHOUL

permutations and combinations of these meanings. Some -see

pictures in their minds of tiny figures, with feeble wings likei lace-wing fly, when the word fairy is mentioned. These seemto me to be reduced memory pictures of angels from books.It is not impossible that these might be photographed in themanner claimed by the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A memorypicture is said to have been photographed by de la Warr andmentioned in his book New Worlds Beyond the Atom. Others seelittle nen about two feet high, dressed in the clothes of thefourteenth century, that is more or less of the same period asthe angels one sees carved on the beams of Elst Anglianchurches. A measure of the size of some of these Sith is perhapsgiven by the Gaelic name for a foxglove, which is cioch naniitf, lthe fairy's breast). In trngland the foxglove is the folk'sglove, the glove of the little folk. In both lands it is associated*itt fairies, possibly because of the effect of the drug, digitalis,obtained from the root. But I think the Brocken Spectre itselfwould also come under the general heading of sith and that atone time at any rate some were ancient gods.

However, there is a more practical variant of the term, whichconnects them with another race of real men. All over the High-lands ancl Islands of Scotland, but more especially in the westround about the sea of Maoil, as it was once called, are roundedgreen mounds, known by the name of sithean (sheean). Jh.eseipp"ur to have been so narned after a real people of antiquity,tle Tuatha D6 Danann, the people of the goddess Danu, whowas the Great Earth Mother. This people is traditionallyrecorded in the chronicles of Ireland as having been driven outby the invasion of the people of Miled to live in the greenmounds round about the sea of Maoil, that is to what are nowknown as the Hebrides. These green mounds, which are stillnumerous today, are nearly always conspicuous. You canusually tell that a mound is called a sithean before you are toldthe fait, or learn it from a map. It is reasonable then to say thatthe Sith and Danann are the same people.

However, it is not as easy as that. Nothing in the study ofantiquity ever is, and, in my experience, it is the type {rom thetext-book which is rare. I have seen an entirely natural sithean,a gravel mound, dug away in North Uist to mend a road andorr" on Kerrera with stone burial cists sticking out of the side

20

GHOST AND GHOULof it which were probably of Bronze Age date. A sithean oncolonsay had pre-neolithic rubbish in it; while one besideLoch creran has the look of being a natural outcrop of rock.But there are many which are all of orr" period and have housesinside them. I have dug out one of these on south uist and thereare a great number of others. Th"y were lived in at a time whenRome ruled in southern Britain, Lut their inhabitants were anIron.Age people. All up the western side of the outer Islands,g9 il

-many other places as well, these people lived in con-aiderable numbers, for there were wide ptains to the west twothousand years ago which have been largely washed

"*uy bythe sea. It seems reasonable to suppose tfrat"these homes insidlthe sithean actually belonged to the sith, or the Tuatha D6Dananrr. we have all heard the stories of fairies living t"rtd;hills. Here is a-people who actually did so. At least the sitesof their homes }""1now frequently become hillocks, *tthorghI do not think that they were so at first.

The archaeologlcal evidence seems to point to their havingbeen

.built originally:r_. "

ring of stone cels surrounding "amovable leather tent. where th" remains of vegetable mate?ialare sometimes found today in the central court,"I think it is thelrac_e of bedding and never c:rme from the roof at all. when theIeather tent was removed for the last time, the court often filledup with blown sand, driven inland as the sea ate away the coastalp]ai1 It was this encroachment of the sea whictr t irrint causedthe Danann to migrate once more and this movement was, Isuspect, to the eastern parts of scotland, where our fairiesbecame a branch of the great and warlike confederacy ;i,h;Picts.

.

Tl the people who recolonized the islands at a later time,the Danann were a mysterious race of small folk who livedinside hillocks. Th"y wire small, because the passages betweenthe stone cells we:"e of necessity built small to take"th" *"igttof their stone roofs. To newco*"rr these passages suggestei ameasure of their stature, which *rs p.o6ably'erroneous, andIrgi. because they only built rude ."binr tliemselves. Before!9ng the sith had degenerated from a race of men to a race ofllttle supernatural beings.-hecisely the same metamor?hosis overtook a second raceof.people known as the Fomorians. Fomor is the modern Gaelic

2t

GHOST AND GHOUL

word for a giant; but I think that the Brocken Spectre '*'ould beboth a Fomor and a member of the Sith. The Fomorians appearfirst in the ancient chronicles as warlike traders by sea. ht afew hundred ],sa1s they had become giants with several rows ofteeth.

In Old John's fairy story, which did not vary in content as hetold it through the years, his ancestor's fairy was milking ahobbled hind. It is to be renrarked that a large part of theSithean dwellers' economy rvas based on the red deer. We findnumerous deer bones in their rubbish heaps and many objectsmade from the antlers. There are still wild red deer in NorthUist, but they are verv small. It does not look as if they hadhad rnuch new bloocl itr them for centuries, althouslt, of course,their grazing nrust be poor. The question, holvever, is, how didthey get tlterc t Did thev ever swim the Minch on their o'*'n II have watched a herd of the North Uist deer swim across anarrow arnr of the sea at Loch Maddy. But I cannot think ofany possible urge to tnake them swim the Minch. For thatmatter, did they ever swim out to the Island of Rhurn? Fifteenmiles of sea, at its narrowest, separate Osgill Bay in Skyefrorn North Uist and the tides are strong. One thinks tlvicebefore sailing across the Minch toclay. Is it credible that breed-ing herds of red deer ever s\^Ialn across I To me it seems mostimprobable. It is far easier to believe that the Sith were tamersand breeders of red deer and that they took thern over in theirboats as cattle. When they rnigrated again to the mainland,there was no need to take them back. Scotland was full of reddeer.

With this idea in mv mintl, I asked Mikel Utsi, who ownsand brecds reindeer on a large scale and who brought an cxperi-mental herd to the Cairngortns, whether he thought he couldtame red deer also. In his opinion there would be no difficulty.This is the most expert opinion one ctur get. The Danann couldhave tamed red deer. They lived in large nutnbers on islands,where recl deer are nrost unlikely to ltave been found in a naturalstate. They ate red deer and used their antlers for tools andornaments. The Sith are believed to have milked the red deer,for Old John's story is uot unique. It seems to me to be as nearto proof as we are likely to get that red deer really were cattleto the Sith and there is nothing supernatural about it.

22

GHOST AND GHOULThe distribution of the sith in an archaeological context is

not unlike the greatest spread of fairy stories. Houses, of thetype found in the Hebrides, have also been found in cornwall,North wales and south wales. The house type has not yetbeen found in Ireland, but I feel sure it will bl-found in time.It will not always have been built of stone, however; in places,where timber was easily available, the surrounding ^store-rooms will have been made of wood.

The reason why fairies are so often said to be small seems tome to be a different problem. Hardly a year passes withoutfniries being seen somewhere in the Islands.-I was told a delight-Iul story about four years ago by Mr. Alan Maclsaac on cafina.A grave had been filled in in the cemetery at Keils, which isnurrounded^by_rocky hummocks with graisy tops. when theg-rave was finished, turf was wanted to make it toot tidy on top.-IJre

men went to one of the hummocks to cut turves. vrh"r, ,h"ylrad finished, they saw a tiny man emerge from the hummocitwilh

". :pilli"g_-wheel on hii back. He r6oked at them crosslyurd said, 'You have taken the turf offmy roof and now the raiirwill come in. I am moving to that hill over there.,^_-.Little people are seen now and then by many races of men.'l'hey.are seen in Africa, for instance, *li"r. they are just liketiny_Africans. I do not for a moment doubt that ihey u:r" ,"..r,but I do doubt the interpretation placed on the seeing. we cantake it as an observed fact that ordinary men and women allover the world have at times seen little people; but I do notbelieve that they really_exist as guch. Throughiut this investiga-tion we

"r" ,rri,-ing that_people do not go'out of their *uyio

tell lies. when Jlr"y say that they have ri"., "

little man, ir,.ylre not just maki$ yp a story based on tradition. They h";reen something which appeared to their mind as a littl.

-*.I think the explanation lies in the perception of the observer.'l'here may no_t be much apparent-diffeience, except in size,between one of these little paople and a ghost; nevertheless ido not think that they are beings of a different order to our-relves as has been claimed by some spiritualists. I do not thinkeither that they are folk mlmorie. bf rome vanished race ofrnraller people, Eskimos for instance. They seem to conformgult: clo-sely to the kind of thing seen by clairvoyants, or as it isfrshionable now to call them'sensitiver.' Th. siZe is something

23

GHOST AND GHOUL

to do with the way the picture is presented to the sensitive'smind and probably has nothing to do with the ordinary facultyof sight. The picture is presented directly to the observer'smind without the aid of his senses of sight or hearing.

In lg34 I made some enquiries as to how a sensitive saw.Most people with this faculty are somewhat incoherent and findit difficult to explain how they see. If you observe them whilethey are'seeing', their eyes do not appear to be in use at all.However, as fai as I can make out, they are Presented in theirmind with a moving picture in colour and on a small scale. Thepicture is presented to their mind like a memory. They do notsee it with their eyes, but know it.

One sensitive in particular gave me a clue, which may be ofsome importance. She told me that, as a child, she saw manyghosts of people who were not actually there in the flesh. Thesefigur"s were not at ground level, but some two feet up in theaii. this seems to indicate that, however the thing was done, thefigures were projected as at the normal eye level of a grownperson standing up and reflected back at a higher level than the6hild'r viewpoint. The resulting picture would appear to thechild, like the projection of a lantern slide on to a screen, upin the air (Fig. o).

It seems reasonable to me that if a sensitive's small-scalemental pictures were in some manner projected and receivedby

" secbnd sensitive, they would appear as small figures. The

origin of the pictures may have been genuine memories, dreampiciures, or imaginary creations built up from folk tales and thelike. I am assuming, of course, that such things can be pro-jected, and having been projected can then be picked up 1ndappreciated by minds other than the one projecting them. Thishis been vouched for throughout the ages on irurumerableoccasions and I have experienced it myself. It is a naturalphenomenon which requires a scientific explanation and cannotbe laughed away with a knowing smile.

It iJ clear, even at this stage, that W.S.B.'s coat and lunchcoultl not have been taken away by little people, who were onlypictures of thought projections and could not exert any force.If any'magic'force was exerted on this occasion, I do notthinkthat tfre Sitfr had any hand in it. The force was presumablythat of psychokinesis of poltergeist type. In the next chapter

24

GHOST AND GHOUL

(v) umu3sso

t"attl :..2Et.d (U

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HiO) H (+i

i isE h'=3!dE&,8 tI5,!E E=(B (A:-aBasicsoET i,'gEEE3'H eE$EXoclo trtf,ot g'E 35=

E:E -tdr- A> og!ptaEsr heooov20Es$ho

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\(s)urnuissoV

25

GHOST AND GHOULI will try to describe an experience with a poltergeist on anotherisland some years later. But I must emphasize once more thatone can only be one's own guinea-pig in these matters. Ncrspoken or written word can be a substitute for one's own practi-cal experience. No one too can convince another who does notwish to believe what he is told. orly the doubter loses by hisincredulity. Chapter Two

\ X f .S.B. and myself, as willhavebeengatheredalready,bothY Y have an interest in islands. His interest is largely in the;pidcrs, for the study of which he long ago earned a world-widereputation. Mine is chiefly archaeological, but birds and some-tinres insects and plants play a part in it. In the latter part of.lune t929, we decided to examine some of the islands off therouth-west coast of Ireland.

I)uring the train journey from the mail-boat to Cork, W.S.B.explained to me that, amongst other things, he was plottingthe distribution of a spider, which only appeared to be found ine narrow belt of country within ten miles of the sea. Its otherpeculiarity lay in its choice of habitat; for it confined itself to alife in dirty bedrooms. We came out of the railway station andwalked along the streets to pick up a car we were to borrow.On the edge of a great area of desolation, which looked as if ithad been bombed for a month, but was really the result of somefracas in the Trouble, rose some gaunt tenement houses. Theywere several stories high and looked forbidding in extrenre."l'his looks the right sort of place,' said W.S.B., and im-tttcdiately vanished into a doorway even darker and moreforbidding than the house itself. I waited outside in some sus-pense, expecting at least the sound of blows and possibly shotsas well, but nothing happened. After what seemed like abouthalf an hour, a window nearest the roof was suddenly flung upand a grinning face looked out. 'It's here all right,' he shoutedand presently emerged into the daylight once more withouthaving seen anybody.

We reached Valencia without incident, having climbedCaran Toul in thick mist on the way. Meals at the hotel, how-G.ver, were somewhat unusual. As soon as we sat down, W'.S.B,

2726

GHOST AND GHOULstarted to rummage in his pockets, pulling out three or fourglass-to?ped pill boxes, a note-book, a ma[nifying glass and apencil. These he arranged with care on either ria" oI his plate.At intervals during the meal he would interrupt any conversa-tion which was going on, and peer through the magnifyingglass at the minute pairs of spiders in each pill box. ll" -*""tmuttering to himself all the time and apparently writing in hisnote-book such phrases as: 'Now he is getting excitld. Sheshows no interest.' This process continued all the weeks wewere in Ireland and I soon got used to it. By the end of the triphe had acquired a mass of information aboJt the marriage ritesof various small and seemingly unattractive spiders. I1o notknow whether it was at this time that he discovered a factwhich earned him a doctorate of scienc e at a very early age.owing to the unpleasant habit of some spiders, who ate trreirmates immediately after the marriage ceremony, the thought-ful males had invented a form of homosexuality.

At valencia, which is most attractive in "uriy summer, wechartered a motor-launch to take us out to the Sk"lligr. These

islands lie out in the western ocean, perhaps six miles fromthe K-erry coast. on June z+th, which was a Leautiful day withyery little wind, we set out. The long Atlantic swell *"i .om-fortable and the views magnificent. we passed the LesserSkellig, covered thick with nesting ganneti, gleaming whitein the sun, and made for the landing-place on skellig Michael,a name which is pronounced something like Vickel.

The skelligs are hill-tops running up from the bed of theAtlantic. Michael is about Too feet high and the Lesser Skellig5oo feet. They are entirely surrounded by cliffs running almos-tlp to their summits in places and the Lesser Skellig seems tohave hardly any vegetation at all on its top. It

-ilnt almostbe a collection of sharp-pointed slag heaps, white in flaces fromthe guano of the gannets.

There is no beach on skellig Michael. you jump from theboat on to a ledge

_of rock. This has been the only landing-placefor at least twelve hundred years, for a flight of sione slaf, itepsleads up from nearby to a monastery on the top, which *asknown to be there in the eighth century. The top of the islanditself consists of two small peaks, separated by i little grassyalp on the coll between. This is perhaps the iize of a Iennis

28

GHOST AND GHOULcourt and is known as Christ's Saddle. The monastery isdeserted now. It was built before the days of the Roman(lntholic Church in lreland. It consists of six beehive huts,lrrrilt 5rf dry stone, and a ruined chapel. A low dry-stone waliwns the only_protection the monks had on a dark night fromfallirrg over the edge of the cliff. tr drew a sketch at the timewlrich gives some idea of this tiny and remote settlement(lfig. z).

I we_n1up to look at the monastery, which I had long wished tort'c, while w.s.B. set to work to collect more 'pill box fodder'irr tlre shape of spiders. It did not take long io .*amine theuronastery. The beehive cells were perfect, exiept that a formercovcring

-of turves had long since blown "*uy. There were aft'w. rough_crosses of no particular interest eicept their great

antiquity. I wandered away, out of the picture, to the left. -HereI r:arne on a great slab of stone, thrownicross a cleft in the rockald overhanging the cliff This, I thought, must have servedtlrc.same purpole as the pole of a latrine. some way down ther:lifI'and below this slab of rock was a slight ledge, ,nd thi. *utr:overed with a luxuriant crop of stinging nettles. It was per-haps a hundred feet below me and six h-undred from the sea.on many occasions I have located old rubbish dumps, on ex-posed coastal sites, by the nettles growing on them. The tempta-tion.was great. Rubbish shot from the monastery had lodged:,T t!"1 ledge and there might be something intJresting in"it.I had d9l" a great deal of cliffclimbing in the last twel'oI y.rtand could see that it was perfectly feasible to climb down t-o theledge. I always carried an old sheath knife in case I wanted todig 1 small hole to examine something.The day was fine and lovely. Fai below, between the twoirlands, I could see a little Breton crabber yawl working herpot-s. Her people just stepped over the rail into their dinghiesand sculled away, standing up, with one oar over the biat'stransom. It seemed a long way for them to have come in such alittle ship, to such a wild and inhospitable coast. still ourBreton cousins are fine seamen and doubtless thought little ofit. You can see their boats today working the reefs-far outsidethe fringes of the Hebrides.

The actual climb down was in shadow for the first fifty feetor so. Then one had to traverse sideways and downwaids to

29

{)r\l'

)r)

(

l

(

\

GHOST AND GHOUL

o:o

.d

GHOST AND GHOULUp to that moment, I had not known that there was a Iighthouseon the island. However, although I felt rather mean at lettingW.S.B. down, I said I would rather go back to dinner in thehotel and we returned to the boat.

It was weak of me, I know, but some things seem rather toomuch of a good thing. As we passed the Little Skellig, it becamea purple shadow dotted all over with 'hundreds and thousands'where the nesting gannets, sat on the ledges. A wheeling cloudof birds h*g above it. 'You would not land there,' said theboatman. 'They would take the eyes out of you.' We did notexpress any incredulity at this statement.

At dirurer, I told W.S.B. something of what had happened,which he naturally received with a grin of disbelief. I did notblame him. I had done the same about his coat at the Shiants.He then said that we must go down to see old so-and-so, whosename I had forgotten, who had been up at Cambridge at thesame time that we were and now was running the Trans-atlantic Telegraph to America.

When he had greeted us, he said, 'You were out on theSkelligs today, weren't you?

GHOST AND GHOULthough this theory is, I very much doubt whether it is the cor-rect answer. But I believe the priests to have been right in oneparticular. When Pope Gregory circulated his celebrated in-structions in the eighth century, he said that pagan custonrs,which were too deep-rooted to be easily abolished, \^,ere to beturned round into Christian ones. In this wif, several pagaJlgods and goddesses became Christian saints. One of these wasLugh, whose name is the Celtic form of Lux, or Lucifer. Hewas Light, or the Sun. Now Lugh was, by a curious twisting ofbeliefs, turned into St. Michael, who was also believed tohave thrown Lucifer, or Lugh, out of Heaven. It is probablethen that St. Michael's name has become attached to the largerSkellig for the very reason that it was once a sanctuary ofLugh.

The happenings on the Skelligs, however, really come wrderthe heading of poltergeist. Much has been written about thissubject, for a poltergeist is a real trouble. In past ages it was amalevolent demon. They are still found today all over theworld and have been studied with considerable care. A polter-geist is an invisible force, either without a rnind behind it, ora mind so small that its actions appear to be completely irra-tional. Poltergeists throw material objects about, move con-siderable weights, produce apports from somewhere else, makenoises and even start fires.

The results coliected by many observers show that mostcases of poltergeist are found in association with some livingperson who is not quite normal and is often on the verge ofbecoming adult. This much has been realized for a long time;but many still think that the mind of the individual concernedis linked with that of some sub-human personality. The forceused to handle the objects which are thrown about and so on,has only recently been demonstrated scientifically to exist byProfessor J. B. Rhine, of Duke University, North Carolina, inhis experiments with dice. It is known as psychokinesis. Butpsychokinesis is only a form of a much more widespreadforce which is known frorrr de la Warr's experiments asresonance. The most ordinary example of resonance, with whichmany people are familiar, is water-divining. Resonance appearsto be akin to electro-magnetics, but is not able to work withoutthe linkage of a human mechanism to it. It may be that reson-

84

GHOST AND GHOULttx:e is human or living electro-magnetism. At any rate I havetarrglrt myself to be quite efficient at waterdiviningand have alsolx.en able to show that it is possible to study fields of force withnothing more elaborate than a hazel fork in my hand. Thertudy of all this is in its infancy and the dead weight of scepti-cinrrr, from those rvho were educated before the force wasret:ogilized, has to be eliminated before the real origin of a;xrltcrgcist is known. It seems clear, hou'ever, that it willprobably be unneccssary to call in any discarnate spirits tott:r:ount for the phenomena. These will follow the natural lawsol'rt.sonance, whatever they may prove to be. Professor RhineItns, however, clearly dentonstrated that the mind has an extraIttuscular power of doing things. He has also shown by practicalt xpt,riment that telepathy, which is a kind of wireless com-tttrrnit:ation between tu'o minds, can also be dernonstrated toexist. Its existence was well known to thousands before theexperirnents were made; but it now becomes a respectableIul{ect for professional scientists to study.

Nt'ither telepathy nor psychokinesis was an accepted ideart thc tirne of the trappenings on the Skelligs; still less weretltt,st: faculties recognized w,hen W.S.B. lost his coat. Now theyIravc filtered tlrrough to the scientific mind and we can usellrt,rn to attenrpt to explain the otherwise inexplicable.

l'oltergeist phenomena appear to involve both telepathy andpl.1,r:lrokinesis. Objects are ntovcd, and noises are made, bytlrr, power of the mind alone. The generally held theory, how-6vor, is that a second and more primitive mincl is also involved,wlrit:h gives the orders to the semi-adult, or neurotic, mind ofwhat we may call the operator.

If lve take the case of the Skelligs, rve can easily see that thellrrrck of the loss of the vessel off the island and the horror feltat thc drowning of the crew may have had a damaging effecttut tlte mind of one of the onlookers. There seems no reason fordoubting that the disaster to the boat frorn Frodis Water andthe plague which followed it had the same effect on one of theItrtttates of that lcelandic Hall. For what it is worth, I thinkthat the poltergeist effects arose fronr that damaged mind inent:lt case and there is no need for calling in a second and sub-Itutttan one. We know experimentally that one sane mindctn affcct the fall of dice in the marurer it requires; Heaven

s5

GHOST AND GHOULalone knows, as yet, what can be done by the subconscious ofa deranged one.

Times are changing fast. Before long the study of telepathyand p-sychokinesis will have become commonplace. The *:r.iof a few courageous people is breaking through the vi.to.i".,crust of science and the taint of superJition is"going r.o* ih"research workers on the so-called

_supernatural. -o".;

,rri" aoj_matic old skin has been thrown ofr great strides will be *"fi"in the study of such things as fairies"and ghosts. lnnumerablepeople have seen ghosts; but only a few 5r"rr" ones have hadthe courage to sludy them. The stigma, however, should reston those dogmatic scientists who, *f,", confronted with a massof information, supplied by obviously reliable witnesr.r, ;ustghrug it off and give it as iheir_opinion that such thirrg, .rrir",be. These men have been left behind as the pursuit orkfio*t.ag"advances. A whole new force is being brougr,t to light;J;il:ycannot see that it exists.

ft may not be _a

great achievement to prove that somethingexists when all the world knows that it does. But professo?Rhine did something- which must eventually alter the wholec_omplexion of scientffic thgught. It is scarcely comparable withthe efforts of the philosopheri I forget who f,u *"i, who, afteryears of complicated study, came to the conclusion that ithereis some thinking going on somewhere'! If ghosts do not exist,how is it that "p.opr"" see them ? The fact is there. It is theexplanation of why and what and how that people want to know.-{hesg ghosts may be memory pictures cr"utea at some levelof the observers' mindsJhey may be imaginary pictures pro-

duced in the same way. They *"y 6. entitie! in tiluir;;;[h,.Lh.y may be creatuies of ihis world, or of another, o. u8ttr.Tles.e are the points.which require study. Th; question is notwhether people see ghostr or,Lt. There"is ample evidence thatthey do so. The records of the society for rs'ychical Researchare crammed with reports of the seeing, hearing and feeling ofghosts. But what is ii that th.y experieice I I am not competentto.ma\e a1y dgsmatic reply io these questions. Ail thai I amdoing in this book is to p..r"rt reports of incidents whichhave come under my own observatio., *d examine them. wherepossible I shall treat them as if.I rvere investigati"g o.airuryconcrete human mysteries, as little detective Lxercises so to

86

GHOST AND GHOULrpcak. At the end I shall try to speculate as to what it all means.'l'lurse who think *y observation was at fault and are con-vinccd that no such things occur, are welcome to their opinions;llrrt they are missing something as surely as if they were colourlrlind or tone deaf.

37D

Chapter Three

\ X fHETHER a true ghoul has ever beenrecorded inBritain,Y v I am unable to say. Thetermisapplied toarevoltingformof demon, found in Asia, which feeds on corpses. It is not thesame as the Icelandic troll, who was said to prefer living people.I

-am using the word 'ghoul', however, to describe i f"efirg

of oppression and horror which is often accompanied by thesensation of intense cold. I have met the ghoul on severaloccasions. It is not a premonition, and it is not a ghost, whichis a visible thing. Neither has it the properties of ipoltergeist.As far as I am aware, it is never seen, but I may be wrong inthis, for many ghost stories appear to combine th" ghoul andthe ghost. AII that I can say is that I have never eiperiencedthe two together.

From tg9,o to t9z5 my mother had a house in shropshirecalled Little Ness. It was close to a medieval church, whichhad a yery large burial mound beside it in the churchyard. Ido not know whether this mound has now been excavatld, butat the time it was apparently intact. I should think that it waseither Roman or possibly Anglo-Saxon and not an ordinaryBronze Age barrow.

My mother rented the house and did not own it. Had sheowned it, I should have tried to persuade her to cut down acedar tree which had bgen planted much too close to mybedroom window. It almost shut all daylight out of thlroom.

On hany occasions, when I went up to bed, I had a mostunpleasant feeling in this room. It is not easy to describe sucha sensation. It was not unlike the one I was to have on theSkelligs some years later, but there saw no active malice in it.It made one feel that it would be nicer to have a light on when

'98

GHOST AND GHOULtrying to go to sleep. One had the idea too that somethingrrright climb out of the cedar tree and into the room. This wastxrnfined to the one room. As I sometimes slept in other rooms,Irrd was also away for long intervals at Cambridge, I do nottlrirrk that I told my mother more at the time than that I didtrot like the bedroom. Too many other things were alwayshuppdning in those days for me to wory unduly about a feelingol'creeps when going to bed. Besides it seemed rather absurdto complain that one got the horrors in the night. I was ashamedof rnyself for taking any notice of the thing.

The house was rented fronr some people in the neighbour-hood. I do not suppose that they are still alive, but as theirrelations might not like it, I shall not mention the name. Thewife was of a nervous disposition and somewhat given to acutercligious display. At one time they had lived in the house myntother rented. There had been a son, of whom his mother hadbeen very fond, but he was dead. As a child he had spent a lotof time clinrbing in the cedar tree. The mother was alwayswutting to return to the house, because of her happy memoriesof the boy climbing about in the tree.

Here we surely have something quite definite. This ghoulwus clearly a thought projection from the mother's mind. Itwes the product of strong wishes and memories. The wisheswere probably coupled with a longing to get 'those people outof my bedroom, so that I can go back to it'. Presumably in herntind she could see the boy climbing about in the tree, but I sawno picture. It may have been in the tree had I known about herwish and looked for it. Perhaps I was not quite on the rightwave-length and someone else might have seen the boy. Allthat happened to me was to feel a ghoul and this may perhapshave been the equivalent of the electic feeling we all felt atthe point from which I saw the Hole Mill ghost. It was apressure which did not result for me in a picture.

Two facts emerge from this Little Ness experience. First, Iwas the receiving set. The transmitter was known. Second, thebroadcast came from a living person and had no connectionwith any possible spirit, unless the boy was anxious for hismother to know that he was there. If that were so, however,rurely he would have made the attempt at the house where hismother was actually living. I think we can safely rule him out.

99

GHOST AND GHOULThis was a ghoul projected by

" living person. The evidence

for this is very good indeed.Ghouls then can be produced by the living and perceived by

people who have no contact with the producer at tlie time. I donot think I ever spoke with this particular tady. They may belittle more ,hT the telepathic reception of ihe thoughts ofothers. The feeling o{cold, which often accompanies their, maybe due to the loss of current by the recipieni to work his re-ceiving set. It se-ems probable that his'battery'has to workharder than usual-and perhaps on a rather didrent frequencyto the one normally_ employed. The old method of dispeilingghostly phenomena by telling them'to depart in the.,un. JrGod' would correspond to the way of 'jamming' a radio broad-cast by interjecting nonsense on the same wave-length. I haveactually found that when neurotic people tire and boie me withintense chatter about themselves, I can usually break the ten-sion by saying doggerel rhymes to myself in my head over andg"gl again. The exhausting flood of talk, with its accompanyingfeeling of strain, tends to falter and dry up. This m"y 6" Iheartless procedure, but 'charity begins it home,

I may be unduly optimistic, but if seems to me that we havealready mlde some

_progress in our search for the meaning ofghosts and ghouls. It is not the mechanics of the thing *f,i.hmatter most, and my attempts at an explanation are probablychildish. These can be safely left for others to work but. wLwant to know where these things come from and what they are.As yet we have met nothing which postulates interference inthis world from some othei plane of existence. In fact, thereverse is the case. All events so far described can be explainedas originating from living people. Possibly a closer study ofthe events connected with the disapp""runi" of w.s.B.'s ioatTgrrt show who,was at the projecting end of that phenomenon.The events on the skelligs are cleaily beyond oir chances ofinvestigation. There are too many personalities involved andthe phenomena began long before we went out to the island.Neith'er w.s.B. nor myself can therefore have been the trans-mitter. I was at the receiving end. The probability is thatsomebody connected with the lighthouse wis the p.o.i.ctor.It is too early-, of course, to have any certainty a-bout thematter; but one begins to think that some people *ry always

40

GHOST AND GHOULbe transmitters and some always receiving sets. I seem to befrlling into the second category, Uut one wiuld find it very diffi-cult to establish that one was a transmitter. No one would evertey to you,'You revolting fellow, you make ghosts.'I knowtwo, or three, persons who I feel pretty certain do produceghosts, but I should find it difficult to infonn them of this fact.

The next story I have to tell of a ghoul is one which wasenacted in just the sort of surroundings which are thought to bevexed by such happenings. It took place in one of the old housesln the Close of X Cathedral. Canon R., as well as being suc-cerrtor, ran the choristers' school. This was centred in No. ET.Some of the boys and masters, however, slept at No. 55 andtlte Masters' Common Room was there. It was in the winterof tgg,+-5 that what I can only describe as our adventure hap-pened. I had dinner at No. 57 with Canon R. and his nephew,L.K. L.K., before he joined the Malayan Police and experiencedntuch worse adventures at the hands of the Japanese, was ajunior master at the school. After dirurer L.K. suggested thatlre and I should go over to the Common Room and have a yarnwith M.M., who was then a master at the school and is nowwell known as a broadcaster and author.

As you went into the door of No. 55 and passed into the hall,tlrcre was a room on either side with windows facing on to thegreen. The one on the left was the Common Room. The oneon the right was then, if I remember right, a classroom, butwhen I saw it again, many years later, it had become a veryrttractive drawing-room, with panelled walls painted in paleEreen. Facing the front door and at the end of the rather narrowhrll, was a small classroom with little in it save a blackboardrnd a large crucifix hanging on the wall. To the left, at thelnner end of the hall, beyond the Common Room, was a broadurd fine oak staircase. I suppose it was a Queen Anne stair,but I forget the exact period.

L.K. and I went into the Common Room and there we foundM.M., sitting at the table with a glass of port in front of him,but looking acutely miserable. 'Whatever is the matter, M. ?'we asked. Hardly raising his head when he looked up, he replied,'The ghoul is on the stairs again.' I had heard some mentionof a ghost in 55, but as most of the houses in the Close, including67 r'are supposed to have ghosts in them, I had not taken much

4t

GHosT AND GI{oULnotice. L.K. and I, however, were intrigued to hear that theghost was actually there, and, abandoning M. to his port, wentout to see for ourselves. We were at once confronted with whatI can only describe as a wall of icy cold at the foot of the stairs.There was more to it than cold. It was actively unpleasant. Ihave only met such sudden cold in Melville Biy on the westcoast of Greenland, when the motor-boat in which I was sittingI

\

Fig. 8. Diagram, not to scale and from memory, of part of the house]4,jlh thg 'ghoul' on the stairsr (A) Hall; (B) Common Room;(C) Stairs; (D) Classroom, with Crucifix X; (E) Classroom;(F) Passage. Our line of advance is indicated.passed from sunlight into the shadow of an iceberg. At onemoment the sun was streaming on to you and you *ere en-joying the glittering bear{y of the bergs; at the next, an icyhand seemed to grip the whole of your boay. This feeling at th;bottom of the stairs was much like that, but there was a feelingof misery with it too.

I look at L.K. and he grinned at me. we both stepped on thefirst tread of the stairs together. The electric light was on.There was nothing unusual to be seen. The ghoul retreated

42

aI

YII

GHOST AND GHOULbefore us. We took a second step and it went back again. Inthis way we pushed it on to the landing above and to the footof a second flight of stairs. Step by step, we pushed it up thisfliglrt of stairs also and then we had it cornered at the very topof the house with only one more step to take. I know we wereboth frightened then. We expected some revolting horror tonratprialize and confront us. We linked arms and took the lastItep. Instantly the thing was behind us, lower down. We hadno fear of it then. We just hustled it down the two flights ofItairs again and at the bottom it slipped back behind us to con-tinue its vigil. We went into the Common Room, rather greenabout the gills, and dernanded glasses of port.

We held a cotrncil for some minutes and discussed this extra-ordinary business. All three of us had felt the ghoul and we wereall agreed that it was not the kind of thing to have in a school.'l'here seemed to be only one answer, the'old man'(ha can'tIrave been much over fifty) must be fetched to throw the ghoulout of the house at once. We went over in a body and foundhim. He must fetch his bell, Book, candle, holy water and what-evcr else was necessary and lay the ghost that night. But hewas unwilling to come. The poor man probably had none oftlre ingredients handy, except the Book. I'm afraid we did notthink of this and took rather a poor view of the matter. How-evcr, he promised to go through the proper performance nextday and we did not press it further. We did, however, learnone thing. He was the person who had h*g up the crucifix inthe little room at the end of the hall; because this was the placewhere the traditional ghost was believed to reside.

I was not present at the exorcism. We heard that it had beenperformed in every room of the house, except one bathroom,which led out of a bedroom where a master slept. L.K. and Iwere all for nlore active measures. We thought somethingmust be hidden at the end of the hall to account for the trouble.We sounded the room with the crucifix and found a spacebetween this and the room to its right. That is directly oppositetlre Common Roorn across the hall. With considerable troublennd excitement, we removed a section of the panelling fromthc wall. There was indeed a space between the two rooms,but it would have been a tight fit for a full-size corpse and therewes no skeleton in it We did, however- find a few mother-of-

4g

GHOST AND GHOULpearl spilikins and counters. These were confiscated by the'old man', but l r* sure they did not pay for the cost of puttingthe room to rights after our assault. They were old onei, how-ever, and were nicely carved.

This was the end of my share in the story. I heard the sequelfrom L.K. weeks later, but have no reason for thinking thit itis in any way distorted: A new master came to the ichool awhile before these events. He was in orders. He was put tosleep in the bedroom next to the unexorcized bathroom. Soonafter his arrival, he came down to breakfast, looking green andghastly. He at once recounted a terrible dream rrJrria had inthe night. He described how, in his sleep, he had seen the bath-rcom door opening and a horrible hairy figure emerge from it.But, as it came into the bedroom, canon R. appeared and helda kind of sheet in front of it. And the worst thing of all was thatthe creature was friendly. After this the new master carried outhis own exorcism, following a different drill book. This wastoo much for the ghoul, who gave up the contest and left thehouse. The last I heard of it was a report that it was still lurk-lng in a passageway outside where the school maids kept theirbicycles.

Now this story goes much further than any of the others Ihave told so far. In its entirety it seems scarcely possible thatthis ghoul can have been the product of *y iirring person,smind, even if he were mentally unbalanced. The *hole thingwas not only unusual; it was very complicated. How could any-one have imagined the vicissitudes of his 'dream-child't rhething, whatever it was, seems like an entity in its own right. Itappears to take one clean out of the range of ordinary humanIife into something quite fantastic. Just as it appears convincingthat the Little Ness ghoul was the projection from the mind o?a living person, so one would have thought from the evidencethat the qhou] at No. dE was not. It sounds like somethingfrom another kind of existence altogether; a sub-human thinfpelhaps, the kind of mind which might have been the agenibehind a poltergeist and tried to push me off the shelligq orhaunted Frodis water. Perhaps I am quite wrong and-somepsychiatrist will tell me that things of this sort are as commonas periwinkles on a beach in the minds of his patients. Whetherthey are or not, we will examine the story a little more closely.

+4

GHOST AND GHOULThe first point which sticks out of the tangle of facts is

nurely that it is rather rash to assume that the sequel has anydirect connection with the ghoul on the stairs. It was a dream,in any case, and was not subject to direct observation. There isno reason to think that the contents of the dream were differentto what was stated. It was just not observed by somebody in awaking state. Let us detach the sequel from the observed factsand return to it later.

Once the grim, hairy, friendly figure is removed, we are leftwith a ghoul of much the same general type as the one at LittleNess, and it seems possible to follow its development. Here theffrst thing is that there was a traditional ghost in that room atthe end of the passage. We have no idea of what form that ghosttook; but it is evident that the Canon thought it would be anuisance to have about the school and hung up the crucifix inthe hope that it would be dissuaded from appearing again.Others may not agree with me, but I think that the hanging upof a crucifix would not have any effect on a ghost at all. Youneed some active jamming effect to interrupt the transmission.It would be more use to say 'Go away', as a small boy is saidto have done to a grey lady, who appeared in his nursery, atLittle Downham vicarage years ago. According to his father,who helped me to eat my sandwiches after digging some BronzeAge burial urns out of a gravel pit, she took offence and wasnever seen again.

I do not think the crucifix had anything to do with it, but Ido think that somebody believed it would do so and had apositive horror of going up the stairs and meeting it, hangingrbout outside the door of the room from which it had beenbanished.

Quite a number of persons must have known what was beingtlone with the crucifix. One of these, a living person, projectedr feeling of cold horror into the house and I think it must havebeen someone whose business took him frequently right upto the top of the house. Otherwise it would have slipped behinduB at the head of the first flight of stairs.

There was, I think, no connection between the traditionalghost and the ghoul on the stairs, except the fear in the mindof somebody who knew why the crucifix had been hung up.The ghoul was an entirely new entity. Mrny peopte will think

45

GHOST AND GHOULI am writing nonsense, but I think it was given some rudi-mentary existence of its own. otherwise I do not see how itcould have moved about when L.K. and I walked at it. somekind of substance seems to be created by thought, which caninterrupt the passage of light. The imagination ind fear of theprojector of this ghoul was so strong th--at he, or she, endowedthe ghoul with- some sergrblance of indirriduality. There arenumerous recorded cases of ghosts, projected by living persons,whichhave.the power of locomotion. The proj".iorr, in"fact, havesucceeded in 'creating' to a limited extent by the power of theirminds. The ghoul was a real creation, as fai as ii went, but ofcourse it was ephemeral.

when the canon was known to have performed his exorcismthe frigJrtened person soon heard aboui it; or ;", ;;; ;;;;seen it being done. Being convinced that a crucifix would drivea ghost out of a room, this person would be even more surethat the exorcism would cause it to leave the house. Nothinghad been done, however, to make it leave the neighbou.hooEand so it must be still hanging about outsicle.

Taking this story like any ordinary puzzle, we seem to havetrvo pointers as to who the frightened person may have been.It wis somebody who frequenied the top of the }iouse, and itwas sorn.bo{y who knew where the rnaids kept their bicycles.It seems highl"v probable that it was one of tire school maids.The stor-v of the sequel now needs to be examined. We arenot told whether the new master was given a detailed accountof what had happened before his arrival. It would have beenremarkable, however, if sorne kind person had not told him aboutit and added something like 'I hope you will sleep well in thereand nothing will come out of the bathroom. The canon forgotto sprinkle holy water in-there, you know.' Men being what tfr"yare, this is almost certain to have happened. But,

"i", if it diinot, there was nothing to prevent the master getting the ideaby_telepathy. At least one of his colleagues *m u sensitive.

what followed was, I think, as thJ man had said himself, adrearn. This dream was a combination, after the manner ofdreams, of more ,hT one apprehension. The first apprehensionwas that something horrible might come out of the^bathroom.The second, I fancy, can be identified also. All this affair hadtaken place not long after a gruesome story had been going

46

GHOST AND GHOULtlrc rounds. I had heard it myself at Cambridge and it had inter-entcd a large number of people and given rise to a lot of talk.'I'hc incidentwas saidtohavetakenplaceon Dartmoor. A ruan wasriding a motor-bicycle from Postbridge towards the Moreton-hantpstead area, when a huge pair of hairy hands appearedlhrrn nowhere, seized his handlebars, and drove the michineoft'th'e road. This was generally believed to be proof of theexistence of 'elemental spirits', and other stories from the samelrea were told in confirmation of this one. These hairy handswere, I think, the idea at the back of the hairy figure in thenlaster's dream. What more revolting object could have beenexpected to come out of the bathroom than a hairy owner ofhairy hands?

This is all rather tame and disappointing, but I must stick tonry original thesis that the supernatural will conform to naturalIrws, even if we do not know the laws as yet. I am not sayingthat visitations do not come from other levels of existenc"; brtwhere phenomena can be explained in terms of this world,tlten such an explanation is to be prefered to one which callsln manifestations from another. If such other-level manifesta-tions are shown to occur, then these also will follow the naturallaws, which control the rvhole universe. They will not betotally incomprehensible, even in terms of the little we knowrlready.

47

Chapter Four

rpHE next affair would almost make a saga in itself, andI although some of the events probably have no relation to

the others, I shall try to tell them all as a connected whole.There may be some connection throughout which I have beenunable to detect.

It began in the summer of tge{, a number of months beforethe affair on the stairs of No. 55 at X. The surroundings aremore or less the same, although the main event took plice inNo. 57 and not in No. 55.1was staying with Canon and Mrs. R.For some reason, which I cannot now remember, I went withMrs. R. to see a relative of hers who was reputed to be fore-sighted. A9 w-e left the house, after the call, and were standingoutside it in the sun, Mrs. R. asked her cousin to tell her for-tune. The cousin was obviously reluctant to do this; but, onbeing pressed, took her hand and looked at it. I was not payingmuch attention to this, but I distinctly noticed what she said,yhich was very short and to the point. It ran something likethis, 'All I can tell you is that you will shortly be going on along journey, quite unexpectedly.' Then they parted.

Not long after this, I went back to Cambridge to help Sircyril Fox (he was Dr. Fox in those days) with the excavationof a Romano-British cemetery. This was at Guilden Morden,some twenty miles to the south-west of the university.

This was the first excavation of its kind I had taken part inand i.t went on for several years. Aithough cyril Fox was incharge of it on this occasion, I was made to take the notes andmeasurements. Subsequently I had to make the plan. It kept mequite busy. we used to take packing-cases of skeletons back toCambridge, where they were to be examined by Dr. W. L. H.Duckwoith at the anitomy school. Each skeleton had a card

48

GHOST AND GHOULwith it with its number. It was no fault of ours that one of thelab boys at the anatomy school kept tame rabbits in the placewhere the skeletons were stored and all the labels became con-fused by their efforts. In future cemetery excavations, I alwaystook care to put the numbers on the bones themselves. This isonly,of interest if the skeletons had, as I doubt, anything to dowith'the subsequent events. We can never tell-rronn-whichrkeleton to suspect. We had two cars, and drove out on differ-ent days, more or less in turn. I brought back any small objectsfound with the burials, to draw them as illustrations for therepoft.

we ran into trouble fairly soon after the excavation hadbegun. Returning to cambridge with a load of bones, and nearto Foxton station, my car, which was only a few weeks old,teized up its back axle and came to a grinding stop. We gotback to Cambridge somehow and not best pleased. The garigeinformed me that, although the car was nearly new, ifre oithad all run out owing to a flaw in the casting. I told them torepair it and get me a different make. We then went to workusing Cyril's car, till a new one was available for me. It wasnot long before his car also was in trouble. we were unableto continue working for several days, until my new onerrrived.

When the new one did arrive, looking bright and efficient,we started off again. we had to travel slowly, of course, untilit was run in. For about three trips, all went well. Then,returning from a day's work, with a load of several boxes ofgrinning skeletons, we were running slowly down the curvingalope between Royston and Melbourn. I had just passed i ,woman with a baby in a pram when I felt the steering had gone.Treading on and pulling brakes, I brought the car t-o a stop-i'twas only moving at about thirty miles an hour. It sat downquite quietly on its axle, for there was no front wheel on thenear side. It just was not there. The woman passed us withouteven noticing anything had happened. Cyril ejaculated 'MyGod, Tom,' but we were not even shaken. We left the car,with its bare axle on the grass verge and its passengers stillin their boxes and managed to get a bus back to Carnbridge.It is not a good plan to leave skulls within reach of East Angli-rnil. For some reason, they have a passion for pulling out the

49

GHOST AND GHOULteeth. I believe they are thought to be a charm against rheuma-tism. I have know, a box, waiting to be colleciecl from a clig,to have every single tooth stripped from half a clozen skulfi.However, on this occasion, we did not care what happened tothe skeletons. 'we were really rather daunted by this t.ipt" seriesof minor disasters. A rule was rnade fro,r thai tirne on that, ifthe anatoml, school wanted human skeletons, it could transportthenr in its own 'Death Cart' in future.

when the third car came to be examinecl, it was found thatthere was no split pin inside the hub cap to prevent the nutsfrom unscrewing on the axle when the cai lvas reversed. It hadbeen reversed on the field where we were excavating and thenuts almost unscrewed. On the first long downhill c"urve, thewheel had just been dragged ofil tsy ,rikirrg a good deal offuss, we had a new car for nothing, arrd tlie excavation wasresumed.

Now this may seem rather too much of a series of coinci-dences. we certainly thought so at the time and others told usthat their cars had broken do,r,n when they rvere transportingskeletons. In fact, one professor, on hearing that *L *..2excavating a cemetery, asked me whether I lad had troublewith my car. He expected it. one does not have to be undulysupcrstitious to think that there was something odcl about i-tall, and that the experience was not worth repe"ating. But thiswas not the end of it.

- I !"d bought a house outside cambridge, on the bank of theold Rornan canal,.rhg car Dyke. FrienJs tolcl nre I ought toget drunk and sit beside the canal in the moonlight to sIe theRoman barges passing by. I dicl not take their alvice, but thenext year I cut a section over the silted-up canal bed. Thereya-s o{y one_ spot available, straight down a garden path, andit landed rjght on top of a pagan Anglo-saxin hut Ln whatmust have been the old towing-path. Ai we had no idea at thattime what kind of houses weie lived in by the pagans of EastAnglia, this was just as good as seeing thi barges.

Mis. R. came up from X to help wiih the r,Jve i,to the newhouse. I was still digging ar Guilaen Morden ancl, the daybefore the move, brought back a finger bone from a woman,shand with a ring on it, so that I could draw it for an illustra-tion. Mrs. R. asked me what I was drawing ancl I showed it to

50

GHOST AND GHOULhcr. she- stepped back, horrified, remarking as she did so, , Howvery unlucky.'

we moved in the next day. After the vans had left, and *,ewere- begin_ning

-to_. get things straightened up, she had an

lpoplectic fit and died almosi as soon as the d'octors reachedher. ]his was a pretty devastating thing to hrpp"n in the middleof a move.

canon R. was rung up and tord. He arrived by car next day.T*n guyr later, after arrangements had been made for thefLneral at X, I drove him fick there. on arrival, we foundL,K. s mother, the Canon's sister, already in No. EZ.

After cleaning up and changing, the ttr"" of us sat down todlnner. The canon sat at one enJ of the table with his sister onhh right, and I was put in his dead wife,s chair at the other end.ln spite of everythilg, I was by no means in a dejected frame ofmind, nor particularly tired.

we had hr.{ly begun dinner_ when a perfectry horriblething happe,ed. I have-had many shocks and inpreasint experi-en(:es of one kind or another, but this was indescribably

"*ru.! yry suddenly sat on and enclosed by someone I could not see.I think I must have been broughl up pretty tough, ;;"-;;;never supposed to show one's feelings, hbwever critical arltua_tion might be. canon R. never noti'ced anything ,aJ

"i "riBut I must have looked white, or shaken, foi after dinner hisrhter took me aside and said, 'something happened to you atdlnner, didn't iti' 'yes,' I said, 'it was rrilr,trh., .It will be allrfrht after the funeral,' she went on. And ,6 it was. Fortunatelythere were not many more meals before that took place. wil;It was over, everything cleared away. There was no trace of itGver again.

Here are a whole number of curioushappenings, some of whichlre related to one another, others which may beiu." coincidence.The first incident is the teiling of Mrs. R.,s fortune in x.The teller must.have known quite"well what sort of unexpectedP::111,*mpoilg to be l"kdl. rt was nor;rr, the jounluy .J9fPr,rr;, for thit was atready. anticipat.a] if,i, ;ffi.;;;;glvel weeks and not even days before its fulfilme;. o";;;;

l

l

rurely assume therefore that not only was telepathy irroi".a,but also that there is some flaw in Jur .orr."piio, tf ti*u, oithrt the events in our lives are rigidty fixea. ir,*r* "pt;;;; ;;5t

GHOST AND GHOULbe no way of getting out of this. This monkeying with timecuts at the very root of the doctrine of Free Will and, until thecorrect answer is found, is bound to leave much religiousteaching hanging in suspense. Yet precognition has alreadybeen scientifically proved by Professor Rhine's experiments.

It had been demonstrated really convincingly marly yearsbefore by Dunne in his careful examination of his dreams. Inhis Erperiment w,ith Time,he showed plainly that some of thesewere compounded of past and fntnre memories. Although hisarguments based on these observations have not generallybeen accepted as correct, there is no doubt that the actual thesis,of future mind pictures being recorded in dreams, is correct.Anyone who can be bothered to record and study their dreamswill find that this is so, even if some of the future thoughts maybe very trivial.

The curious sequence of misfortunes which happened to thecars in which we were transporting skeletons from GuildenMorden would seem to be pure coincidence, were it not foranother story which I will tell later. I will leave this for themoment, for it is, I fancy, guite distinct from the main streamof events. It is otherwise, however, with the second premoni-tion. When the finp;er bone with the ring on it was shown toMrs. R., she at once became what is known in the Celtic worldas 'fey'. She may have subconsciously remembered her previouswarning and seen some significance to herself in the ring on thedead woman's finser; there was no time for thinking anythingout at all. Yet she obviously regarded these objects