Phantom Coaches

[dem bones]

G Vernon Stokes (?)

Albert Smith - A Real Country Ghost Story: (Bentley's Miscellany, Jan. 1846). Allen Grove [ed.] - The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Vol 2 (Valancourt, Dec. 2017)

Amelia B. Edwards – The Phantom Coach, aka, The North Mail: (All the Year Round, Christmas 1864; Montague Summers The Supernatural Omnibus, 1931; Peter Haining (ed.) – The Ghost Finders: Tales of Some Famous Phantoms, 1978, & Co).

Thomas Quiller Couch - The Spectral Coach of Blackadon: (Popular Romances of the West of England, 1865: Alastair Gunn [ed.] - Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 4, 2019).

The Rev. Dr. [Augustus] Jessopp. - The Phantom Coach: (Illustrated London News, 3 November 1893).

James Skipp Borlase - The Wicked Lady Howard; or, The Coach Made of Dead Men's Bones: (Wicklow People 24 Dec. 1903; Christopher Philippo The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Vol. 5, 2021).

G. D. W. - A Pre-enacted Tragedy: (The Tatler, 24 August 1927

A. B. C. - The Coach and Four: (The Tatler, 13 Nov. 1929

Noel Lloyd & Geoffrey Palmer - Ghost of the Coach-Road: (Ghosts Go Haunting 1962, Haunting Stories of Ghosts and Ghouls, 1982).

Jeanette Swan - Ghost Coach: (Misty #57, 10 March 1979).

Philip White - Tarrant Valley Vampire: (Crimson #5, Jan 1991).

Alan Robson - The Phantom Coach of Rugby: (Nightmare on your Street: More Grisly Trails and Ghostly Tales[/url. 1993)

Betty Puttrick - Gentlemen (and Ladies) of the Road: (Haunted Buckinghamshire, 1995).

Terry Oakes

[dem bones]

Siân Cardy

The Phantom Coach

The south-west of England is rich in traditions of ghosts and apparitions for those who can gain the loquacious confidence of the country folk, says Mr. Clive Holland in the Penny Magazine. Up the drive of a certain Manor House, which we will not particularise more than to say that it is situated in one of the south-west counties of England, a phantom coach, with spectral horses and driver, is always heard or seen prior to the death of the head of the family or of some important member of it. The belief that this spectral coach always bodes ill to the owners of the Manor House is so ingrained that the scoffing of the most sceptical would, we feel sure, fail to shake it. On an occasion of quite recent years, a number of gentlemen and two ladies, who formed a portion of the house party down for the shooting in November, were startled on their return towards the Manor House at dusk to hear the sounds of several horses' hoofs coming up the drive, which, between huge trees, runs for a distance of some 500 or 600 yards, with several curves, up to the house from the high road. Upon turning to see what the meaning of the sound could be, all the party saw, as they imagined, an old-fashioned coach with a team of four white horses advancing towards them. They drew aside, and as the coach passed them the two ladies screamed, and fell almost fainting in the arms of their companions. One was the daughter of the house, and she had recognised at once the significance of this event. Almost speechless, she made her way to the house with the rest of the party, one of whom asked the footman if a coach had not driven up to the door. The reply "No, sir," given with a face upon which traces of extreme perturbation were evident, caused a joke to go round the party. At dinner the guests noticed that their host was very much disturbed, and that the subject of the coach was an unpleasant one, so it was dropped. All retired to rest about eleven o'clock, some, no doubt, to think over the mysterious appearance of the coach, and others to sleep. Early in the morning a telegram, which had been despatched too late the previous night for delivery, came to hand, conveying the intelligence that the only son of the house had been drowned whilst wild fowling in the Fens. It was nearly forty years before that the coach had last been seen, although seventeen years previously it had been heard to drive up to the front door and away again down the avenue in the middle of the night. On this occasion the head of the family had died in his sleep the next night from heart failure. The villagers have a firm belief in the existence of this phantom coach, and there are several alive who remember its appearance forty years and more ago.

— Midlothian Journal, 12 May 1905.

The Coach and Four

Family legends may sound absurd to most people, in fact I used to be amongst that number, seeing little possibility of truth handed down in tales which were generations old. There runs a legend of singular ill-omen in our family which dates back from about the middle of the sixteenth century.
A certain coach and four is said to appear three times in the grounds. These signs are a pre-warning of disaster to the heir. Luckily the coach only appears once in each century, although there are always rumours current amongst the village people. The last appearance of the coach was in the early 'eighties, when one of my ancestors, heir to the estate, died a week after the visitation.
The events which I am about to recall happened in 1924. My brother and I were returning from a visit round some estate cottages when suddenly I heard the sound of horses' hoofs clattering along the road. Wondering who it could be, I ran on ahead round the corner, and saw what looked like the back of a large stage-coach disappearing down the drive. Puzzled, I told my brother, who only laughingly replied that I must have grown superstitious. I forgot all about it till one day, about a fortnight later, my maid came running to me in a state of considerable alarm. She swore that she had seen a heavy black travelling coach lumber along one of the yew avenues, to finally disappear at the farther end. I was by this time feeling considerably alarmed, but I told the maid that I wished the greatest secrecy kept for fear of alarming the other servants. The phenomenon had appeared twice; it had yet to appear a third time. I did not have long to wait. The next evening I happened to be out in the garden picking some roses when I was interrupted in my work by the sound of heavy wheels rumbling along the drive. I ran quickly into a small summer-house, and arrived just in time to see a black coach and four, driven by a single coachman, dashing down the road at full gallop. The next thing I remember was being helped up from the floor by one of the servants. I had fallen into a dead faint. At the end of the week my brother died, suffering from acute heart trouble. — A. B. C.

— The Tatler, 13 November 1929

[dem bones]

Tom Herzberg, for Terence Whitaker's Haunted England: Royal Spirits, Castle Ghosts, Phantom Coaches & Wailing Ghouls (Contemporary Books, 1988)
Erhard Amadeus-Dier, The Belated Guest (Illustrated London News 20 Nov. 1935)

The Phantom Coach
By The Rev. Dr. Jessopp

If you have never heard of the Phantom Coach that travels about the old roads and old trackways of the county of Norfolk, it is your own fault; it is not mine. For I have written of that coach in a book that will do you good to read and do me good if you buy it. I wrote about that coach mockingly once; I tremble to write of it as if it were a delusion now. Have I not spoken with those on whom it called, at whose doors it stopped, who saw the flash of its lamps, who heard the roll of its wheels, who have shuddered with a sickening horror lest it had come for them, and only breathed again when it had vanished and passed on?

Who knows not "King Solomon's Mines" and "She"? I had almost written "Her"! The gifted writer of those fascinating books had a father, and he was my neighbour and friend. A more robust and genial man I never knew. Let his gifted son forgive me if I take leave to repeat what he told me more than once. I think it was Christmastime, or about the turning of the year. There was a joyous company in the house; they were waiting for one of those vigorous and manly sons of the large-hearted squire, who that night was expected home. Suddenly first one and then another cried: "There he is!" Sure enough, the sound of wheels was heard coming up the drive; the carriage stopped as usual at the inner gate; then it came slowly up to the door, and some of the party ran to greet the new arrival. There was nothing to be seen. Though all the household had heard the sound of the wheels, and all were ready with words of welcome on their lips, yet there was nothing! It was a windless night, and it was absolutely impossible for any real vehicle to have come and gone; yet as absolutely certain to the minds of those who were present on that occasion that a carriage had come up to that front door and had vanished — whether into the bowels of the earth or into the infinite ether, none of them would have dared to say. But nothing happened — nothing.

Longham Hall is a very different place from Bradenham Hall. Bradenham is the house of "a fine old English gentleman, one of the olden time." Longham is a better sort of farmhouse, with as little romance or sentiment about it as about any house in Bedford Row. It was newly built about forty years or so ago. The road had been newly made, and the fresh gravel had been laid down not many weeks, when H., the tenant of the farm, went to bed as usual, and all the family were sound asleep. They were awakened by the very unusual sound of carriage wheels upon the gravel; the carriage came on and on, exactly as in the other case, and stopped at the front door. H. sprang out of bed, threw up the window, and saw the flare of carriage-lamps under his very eyes. He called out, asking who was there. There was nothing to answer; nothing to be seen! The practised ear of the old yeoman could not be mistaken when he said, "No fewer than two horses at least could have drawn those four wheels over the new gravel." He evidently believed that it must have been a coach and four. Yet when the morning came, it was clear that the outer gate had not been opened; not a wheel had passed over the gravel. Friend H. told me all this, and was prepared with a theory to explain it all, but inasmuch as his theory was by far the most incredible and incomprehensible part of the whole story, I found no difficulty in forgetting it, and if I remembered it I would not repeat it. There are some things "that don't bear repeating"! I have heard a great many ghost stories in my time, but I never heard one of them so silly as the very best attempt to show how it was that so-and-so was seen and heard. The credulity of incredulity beats the credulity of superstition hollow! Nothing happened — nothing.

Now comes old Biddy's story. Breccles Hall is one of the most beautiful and interesting Elizabethan houses in the county of Norfolk. It was dismantled and turned into a farmhouse about sixty years ago, and the heraldic shields in stained glass that were at that time in the windows were removed to the mansion of the purchaser of the estate, together with other memorials of former owners and occupants. Breccles Hall has a history. It was a place of resort and hiding for the Seminary priests, who were hunted and proscribed and barbarously slaughtered in Queen Elizabeth's days. It was a place at which Mass was said every now and then, when the doors were shut and a few trembling but devout worshippers ventured to gather together at the secret invitation of Mistress Eleanor Woodhouse, who lived at Breccles, and whose husband had to pay heavily for his wife's stubborn clinging to the old ritual. Then it was a place where Lady Baldock lived and where she died, and when she died she would have herself buried in an erect position in the church hard by. It was a house which for three hundred years no owner seems to have been able to hand down to a grandson of his own name. It is a house in which tradition says that once upon a time there came some cowled monks and settled there; and certainly, among the pictures that once hung upon its walls, there was a picture of two nuns that stood out of the canvas, and would have walked out of it but that one held the other by the hand, and so they were a check either upon each. Lastly, it was a house in which two of its owners are said to have committed suicide. One certainly did; I have my doubts about the second.

Put all these things together, and if Breceles Hall is not a haunted house, and has not been a haunted house for three hundred years, all I can say is that it ought to have been. I have my own suspicions—and they are strong ones—that it was dismantled at last, because it was held to be haunted. Think of the accumulation of facilities for ghostliness here. A lady buried upright; her head not six inches from the pavement of the chancel. Wandering Mass priests, scuttling behind the arras and hiding in the roof. White monks and black nuns. Mangled suicides, and childless old gentlemen mumbling in their desolate orbity; and the owls hooting, and the woods moaning, and the rats making night horrible with, their maddening squeakings at wholly unaccountable times. What! That house not haunted? Impossible!

Be it as it may. The Phantom Coach called there some ninety years ago—called and fetched away Jarge Mace. And who was Jarge, and how much of him was fetched:

— Illustrated London News, 3 November 1893

[dem bones]

Peter Archer, for Peter C. Smith [ed.], The Phantom Coach: Thirteen Journeys into the Unknown, Kimber, 1979.

Knights of the High Toby

"The ruins of a Franciscan monastery at Winchelsea, near Rye in Sussex, were once the home of two well-known highwaymen.

The brothers Joseph and George Weston lived here under assumed names and were looked upon by the locals as country gentleman, but at night they donned cape, mask and tricorn hat and plied their trade as 'Knights of the High Toby' throughout the surrounding countryside. They were caught in London after robbing the Bristol mailcoach and were subsequently executed at Tyburn in 1783.

But according to local observers, the two brothers are still to be seen in the ruins of their former home, or careering about the district at dead of night. One, believed to be George, is often sighted in the shadows of a particular tree, armed but, by all accounts, headless, and waiting for the opportunity to surprise and rob a phantom stage-coach. Many motorists claim to have been frightened by the sounds of galloping horses' hooves, seeming to come up on them from behind, which, on reaching them, cease as mysteriously as they begin."

— Terence Whitaker, Haunted England, 1987

Whitaker's book also makes mention of a haunting by phantom coach in Manifold Valley, Warks., dating from Cromwell's Protectorate. The original coach-and-four was caught in a storm and fell into a river, drowning the entire family. Its claimed the coach and spectral passengers still travel the country road where once stood their ancestral home, Throwley Hall.

* Thanks Princess TuvStarr for bringing Haunted England to our attention.

[samdawson]

On the subject of phantom coaches, which appear to be quite prolific, there's a good description of one in Laurie Lee's wonderful (but unreliable) memoir, Cider with Rosie: ... up here, any midnight, but particularly New Year's Eve, you could see a silver-grey coach drawn by flaring horses thundering out of control, could hear the pistol crack of snapping harness, the screams of the passengers, the splintering of wood, and the coachman's desperate cries. The vision recalled some ancient disaster, and was rehearsed every night, at midnight." If you saw the coach and talked about it you went white, your teeth fell out and you died of trampling. 

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Jan 4, 2024 14:36:01 GMT samdawson said:

On the subject of phantom coaches, which appear to be quite prolific, there's a good description of one in Laurie Lee's wonderful (but unreliable) memoir, Cider with Rosie: ... up here, any midnight, but particularly New Year's Eve, you could see a silver-grey coach drawn by flaring horses thundering out of control, could hear the pistol crack of snapping harness, the screams of the passengers, the splintering of wood, and the coachman's desperate cries. The vision recalled some ancient disaster, and was rehearsed every night, at midnight." If you saw the coach and talked about it you went white, your teeth fell out and you died of trampling. 

The Bulls Cross Coach, Slad, Gloucestershire.

[samdawson]

Jan 4, 2024 16:48:10 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

Jan 4, 2024 14:36:01 GMT samdawson said:

On the subject of phantom coaches, which appear to be quite prolific, there's a good description of one in Laurie Lee's wonderful (but unreliable) memoir, Cider with Rosie: ... up here, any midnight, but particularly New Year's Eve, you could see a silver-grey coach drawn by flaring horses thundering out of control, could hear the pistol crack of snapping harness, the screams of the passengers, the splintering of wood, and the coachman's desperate cries. The vision recalled some ancient disaster, and was rehearsed every night, at midnight." If you saw the coach and talked about it you went white, your teeth fell out and you died of trampling. 

The Bulls Cross Coach, Slad, Gloucestershire.

Indeed. Bull's Cross at night was a place that terrified Lee as a child (it's difficult to understand why now, and it was the same road but on the other side of the village where he had the accident that blighted his entire life) and he also made it the site of the hangman who executed his own child and then hanged himself. This too is, I think, like the coach, sheer imagination. Nevertheless I'd heartily recommend that if you like the book you visit Slad. I can make you a map of where the events and myths did or didn't take place 

[dem bones]

Ryz Hajdul

A fine legend tells of the ghost of 'the Wicked Lady Howard' riding in a macabre coach made from the bones of her four husbands, all of whom she is supposed to have murdered. The coach is driven by a headless coachman from Okehampton Park to Fitzford, her home, where each night she has to bring a blade of grass plucked from the park. This task, to which she was committed by exorcism, will continue until every blade is plucked, when the world will end. Her grim coach is followed by a skeleton hound, a different canine from the black dog which haunts the Castle, a more traditional beast whose glance means death within the year.

Christmas Eve sees a chilling visitation at Bradgate park, in the heart of Charnwood Forest, when Lady Jane Grey drives up to the ruins, her head held on her knees. She is drawn by four headless black horses, and she alights from the carriage and walks to the house

— J. A. Brooks - Britain's Haunted Heritage, 1990.

[dem bones]

Carl Jacobi - The Coach on the Ring: (Ghost Stories, Dec. 1931-Jan. 1932 as The Haunted Ring; Revelations in Black, 1947). Hensdorf, Germany 1730. Johann Hess, a goldsmith and black magician, strangles the Prince von Hersdorf for deliberately running over little daughter Olga in his flashy Spanish carriage. Awaiting arrest and burning at the stake, Hess engraves a replica of the coach-and-six on a ring, to which he applies a curse dooming von Hersdorf to drive the road to the castle every midnight for two centuries.

Tonight is the 200th anniversary.

E. Nesbit - John Charrington's Wedding: (Temple Bar, Sept. 1891). Unfortunately for his bride, he'll not allow anything to ruin their big day.

[toff]

There were illustrations that accompanied Borlase's "Wicked Lady Howard" in at least one of its appearances, under a different title:

Borlase, Skipp. "A Wicked Deed; or, The Haunted Coach." Wicklow People. December 23, 1905: 8 cols 1-6.


drive.google.com/file/d/1-Lv699B7XxrGQt41l3C84YWHnl71dEwR/view?usp=sharing

drive.google.com/file/d/13p0boTzDpYC5_1bp0REs8OLlUesK8Tpm/view?usp=sharing

drive.google.com/file/d/1zzByNO6V07h6vEGY-KSHB1GmnaMmwbjW/view?usp=sharing

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

 

[dem bones]

Thank you both.

"Nineteenth-century picture of the phantom coach which is said to be an omen of death to anyone who sees it", reproduced in A Dictionary of Ghosts, 1993.

Phantom Coach

According to tradition, the phantom coach comes to fetch the dying, as well as being used by the dead for late-night drives. It can either be a genuine coach or else a hearse, but it is always black like its driver and horses, and they are almost always headless. Rarely does the coach make any sound, but it travels at great speed, and for anyone to see one is said to be an omen of death. These coaches are believed to have superseded the bands of phantom huntsmen who once plagued the countryside, according to an anonymous writer in the Athenaeum in 1847. He writes,

"The spectral appearance often presents itself in the shape of a great black coach, on which sit hundreds of spirits singing a wonderfully sweet song. Before it goes a man who loudly warns everybody to get out of the way. All who hear him must instantly drop down with their faces to the ground, as at the coming of the wild hunt, and hold fast by something, were it only a blade of grass; for the furious host has been known to force many a man into its coach and carry him hundreds of miles away through the air."

Phantom coaches have apparently become rarer since the advent of the motor car, but they are still being reported in parts of rural England as well as in France and Germany. Perhaps the most famous phantom coach is the Turberville Coach of Dorset which runs at dusk from Woolbridge Manor, the ancient seat of the Turberville family, to a point near Bere Regis. It is said only to date from just over two hundred years ago, but is still an omen of death to anyone who sees it. The phantom was immortalized by the great English writer, Thomas Hardy (1820-1928) who knew the legend well and makes mention of it in his famous work, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). Like a number of phantom coaches, it is believed to owe its origin to a terrible murder. Another famous coach is that belonging to Sir Francis Drake which he is seen driving across Dartmoor on starless nights, followed by a pack of baying hounds.

— Peter Haining, A Dictionary of Ghosts, 1993.

The Coach that Wasn't There

One night in August 1878 Major W. went to the front door of his house in an isolated part of Scotland for a breath of air before going to bed. As he stood looking out, he saw a coach and pair coming up his drive. Two men were sitting on the coachman's box. They drove swiftly up the drive and over the lawn toward a stream, oblivious of the Major's warning shout about the water beyond. Then they wheeled sharply and drove back.

By this time Major W.'s son had joined him with a lantern, and the boy was able to catch a glimpse of the carriage's occupant. It was a stiff-looking figure, probably a woman, draped in white from head to toe. This person gave no sign of recognition, nor did the coachman and his companion. The Major did not recognize his visitors or their carriage, which he found odd because he knew the neighborhood well. The coach left as it had come. The following day Major W. made inquiries, but no one had heard of or seen the mysterious coach no one except the Major, his son, and his wife and daughter who had been drawn to the window by his shout. They examined the ground over which the coach had driven. It was soft and damp, but bore no trace of wheels or hooves.

— Frank Smythe, Ghosts & Poltergeists, 1976.

[dem bones]

"When I wrote on the subject of the Phantom Coach in November last, I never thought that I should have occasion to recur to it again. But it so happens that among the letters which came to me as a natural consequence of my rashness in dealing with so mysterious a phenomenon there are at least two which it seems to me that my readers ought to be made acquainted with, be they sceptics of the most pronounced type who are prepared to disbelieve anything and everything, or be they the so-called spiritualists whose credulity has no limit..... "

Once begun, Augustus Jessopp found difficulty in leaving the matter of these headless horse-drawn spectral carriages alone. Following articles are a maybe too long and tedious for a message bore post, so I've compacted them into a long and tedious pdf for your avoidance instead.

The Rev. Dr. Jessopp - The Phantom Coach II: (London Illustrated News, 25 November 1893)

The Rev. Dr. Jessopp - Latest News of the Phantom Coach: (London Illustrated News, 13 March 1894)

Andrew Lang - At the Sign of St. Pauls: (London Illustrated News, 6 April 1907)

Attachments:

Jessopp Lang Phantom coaches.pdf (73.72 KB)

[dem bones]

Don Dyen, for Bernhardt J. Hurwood, Chilling Ghost Stories, Scholastic 1973.

"The arrival of Her Majesty's Mail is a stirring incident which only the tardy or truant house-holder can be expected to enjoy. It is midnight when the sturdy team trots down Castle Hill and the Mail flashes past the quondam coaching-house, long since retired into private life as a dignified residential property. The relief team, in admirable condition and spick and span equipment, is drawn up in front of the Post Office. The change is speedy; the parcels for transit are gathered up whilst the new team is being put in harness, and the Mail rattles off again, setting the slumberous windows aglow as it traverses the narrow street on its eastward journey. Those whose unrelaxing rule is "early to bed," sustained by an unexpressed aspiration for health, wealth and wisdom, will have little personal acquaintance with Her Majesty's Mail. Only the belated traveller and the festive sojourner will interest, and possibly alarm, the circle at breakfast by recounting how, on the stroke of midnight, a phantom coach whirled by him; how spectral passengers, muffled up in cloaks and comforters, glowered down upon him, and how a reeking team struck out sparks from the flints in the roadway, and vanished in the distance ere he could rub his eyes and look about for an explanation of the portent."

— Maidenhead Advertiser, 24 September 1890

[humgoo]

Jan 8, 2024 10:01:15 GMT dem bones said:

The Rev. Dr. Jessopp - The Phantom Coach II: (London Illustrated News, 25 November 1893)

Thanks a lot for Part II! Had been wondering why the text above ends abruptly. And what a pleasant surprise. Very charming. (I had read in Meddling With Ghosts the Reverend's "An Antiquary's Ghost Story", which is a plot-less three-pager, so I didn't have high hopes at first for his take on phantom coaches.)