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Post by dem bones on Nov 16, 2020 10:23:13 GMT
The postie in the second newspaper clipping has probably cracked the case of the phantom train noises and footsteps at Whitechapel, Dem. Amazingly, the Post Office built and operated a driverless narrow guage underground railway right across (or should that be under?) London, over 6 miles from Paddington in the west to Whitechapel in the east, carrying nothing but letters and parcels. This incredible thing was completely automated and ran continuously from the 1920s. One neat feature was that the tracks were deep underground between the stations, but rose steeply to the stations (inside sorting offices) which were much closer to the surface, dropping again for the next section and so on. This helped the automatic deceleration approaching a stop and acceleration when moving on to the next station, and also meant that the mail didn't need to be lifted so far back to the surface at each point. Unlike the full size London Underground, it operated right round the clock. At various points it ran very close to the Underground so passengers could hear the narrow guage mail trains and the postal workers in the tunnel next door - spooky. Closure came in 2003 when management decided that sending dozens of noisy, polluting trucks through the London streets all night long would be a better option... Some of the mail trains are now in railway museums. Even better, a short section of the railway has been reopened to visitors as a working museum. You can ride in tiny converted carriages that used to be stuffed full of mail sacks for a short run, if you're so inclined. The Royal Mail and London Transport staff knew it was the mail train, as I'm sure did the Advertiser when they ran the story. Worked a week of nights at the Whitechapel Office toward the end of the 'nineties but never could gain access to the tunnel - don't think I even found out where the entrance was. The Royal London Hospital next door - now under demolition - could be epically Victorian creepy after dark. I loved it around here then.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 16, 2020 10:24:47 GMT
Jennie Lee Cobban - Geoffrey de Mandeville & London's Camelot: Mysteries & the Occult in Barnet (JLC, 1997) Patricia Anne Sexton Acknowledgements Introduction
The Ghost of Geoffrey de Mandeville The Robber Baron Geoffrey and the Grail Knights London's Camelot It's Spooky in the Park After Dark A Witch’s Cottage, a Religious Cult and Some Historical Mysteries Mysteries of the Battle of Barnet Maggie's Ghost, a Heretic and a Witch Charm Ghosts and Magicians in Monken Hadley Seeking Hadley's Secret Passage An Unexplained Earthwork, Mysterious Monks & a Hidden Shoe
References and Further Reading IndexBlurb: Does the ghost of a medieval Earl haunt East Barnet and Hadley Woods? And what is his link with the enigmatic Knights Templars? What is the secret of mysterious Camelot Moat in Trent Park - is it the real site of Arthur's Camelot? And is Monken Hadley the most haunted village in England? Local historian and archaeologist Jennie Lee Cobban explores the occult mysteries of the Barnet area, delves into its hidden history and brings to life some of the bizarre characters who have lived in this most surprising of London's suburbs."Headless hounds, decapitated bodies, spectres in the trees - the list of ghostly experiences at Oak Hill Park in East Barnet seems to go on and on." - Barnet Press, 10th May, 1995 Not sure of this one's current availability. It went to at least two editions and, should a copy come your way, would suggest you give it serious consideration. Crafty corpses, ghouls, and multiple poltergeists; blue women, grey nuns, sinister clergymen, and the shimmering spectres of Gerald Gardner’s Bricket Wood coven; a decapitated phantom in flares here, the terrifying "Blob thing" of Hadley Common there, and the smoking ghost of Grasvenor avenue (available evidence suggests he rolls his own). Jennie Cobban tackles these and similar specimens of preternatural strangeness with such highly contagious enthusiasm that before long you're as enthralled and excited by her every new find as she is. We get the inside dirt on the arrest of a wannabe necromancer and girlfriend as they attempted to raise the ghost of Walter, the alleged pirate, in Monken Hadley Churchyard on 31st October 1972. Exploits of Maggie, the spectral "serving wench" of the Dandy Lion pub (since exorcised); a first hand report on the Halloween 1996 Spookathon which saw hordes of fancy dress ghost hunters and vampires descend on the most haunted village in England. Sadly, "we did not even see anything which could have been mistaken for a ghost and about which we could have exaggerated and embroidered upon later!" Well, you can't hit a Monster of Glamis jackpot every time. East End and the City get much of the attention, but little did we realise that, when it comes to paranormal activity, the North London - Hertfordshire border is where its that.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Nov 16, 2020 13:21:35 GMT
The Royal Mail and London Transport staff knew it was the mail train, as I'm sure did the Advertiser when they ran the story. Worked a week of nights at the Whitechapel Office toward the end of the 'nineties but never could gain access to the tunnel - don't think I even found out where the entrance was. The Royal London Hospital next door - now under demolition - could be epically Victorian creepy after dark. I loved it around here then. The NHS used to have some seriously creepy Victorian premises. Nights on call were very strange indeed sometimes in some of them. Weirdest were the vast, sprawling labyrinthine corrodors in the old asylums....
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Post by helrunar on Nov 16, 2020 14:41:27 GMT
Kev, the Barnet Mandeville/Templars/Camelot book sounds great. I found this interesting review by a person who contributed a photograph to the updated edition: www.badwitch.co.uk/2014/01/review-geoffrey-de-mandeville-and.htmlAccording to this post, the book is currently available only through the Barnet Museum. I went on the Museum's site (link helpfully provided) but there's simply a list of books "available in the Museum shop." The title Geoffrey de Mandeville (tout court) does figure amongst these, but no ordering info is provided (the Museum may be staffed mainly by volunteers, for all I know, so they may simply lack any set-up to fill mail orders). I would presume the Museum has been shuttered since last March and unfortunately is likely to stay that way. I checked Abebooks but no sign of it, and ama zombie says the book is "unavailable," so it de facto exists in a black hole unless you know somebody with a key to the Barnet Museum shop who'd be kind enough to sell you a copy. Author Jennie Lee Cobban also wrote book with the evocative title 800 years of Barnet Market--spicy! That one is available on Abe at a really low price. The seller has a shop in that storied town of Bracknell. And that's the end of the line. SRS
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Post by dem bones on Nov 16, 2020 19:48:55 GMT
Kev, the Barnet Mandeville/Templars/Camelot book sounds great. I found this interesting review by a person who contributed a photograph to the updated edition: www.badwitch.co.uk/2014/01/review-geoffrey-de-mandeville-and.htmlAccording to this post, the book is currently available only through the Barnet Museum. I went on the Museum's site (link helpfully provided) but there's simply a list of books "available in the Museum shop." The title Geoffrey de Mandeville (tout court) does figure amongst these, but no ordering info is provided (the Museum may be staffed mainly by volunteers, for all I know, so they may simply lack any set-up to fill mail orders). I would presume the Museum has been shuttered since last March and unfortunately is likely to stay that way. I checked Abebooks but no sign of it, and ama zombie says the book is "unavailable," so it de facto exists in a black hole unless you know somebody with a key to the Barnet Museum shop who'd be kind enough to sell you a copy. SRS Am hoping to visit the Museum after lock down, so will try find out the current state of play re "Geoffrey ..." Chrissie and I fluked an invite to the launch at Monken Hadley Church Hall on the bitterly cold Halloween night of 1997. A truly enchanting evening, wall-to-wall local historians, some of them clergy, some witches. Everyone seemed to get along famously. I took to Jennie straight away, a very warm, good-humoured lady.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 17, 2020 18:15:44 GMT
Diana Norman – The Stately Ghosts of Britain (Frederick Muller, 1972; originally 1963) Photo: Jeremy Grayson: Mr Corbett and the Very Reverend Mother Superior join forces to investigate poltergeist activity at troubled Burford Priory. Introduction
Longleat Littlecote Woburn Abbey Salisbury Hall Sawston Hall Camfield Place and Buriton Manor Penfound Manor West Wycombe Park Brede Burford Priory Beaulieu
ConclusionsBlurb: THE STATELY GHOSTS OF ENGLAND
The English have been haunted too long for their own good. Far too many printless toes have stepped down the lovely corridors of our stately homes with impunity. We have become blasé. We shoulder our way through this perpetual danse macabre with hardly a thought. One man who has given the subject considerable attention, however, is Tom Corbett, whose experiences on a prolonged ghost hunt through England are recorded here by Diana Norman. Pacing the long, dark corridors of mansions like Longleat, Woburn and Beaulieu and walking through quiet, lesser-known manors, Corbett found his ghosts — some terrifying, some friendly and others who were merely lost and bewildered. Most fascinating of all, he uncovered the relationships that exist between the ghosts and their owners. The masters of the stately homes live in a strange, double world where the past survives side by side with the present; where the restless feet of their ancestors tread the floors, where doors swing open mysteriously and shut again, where grey shapes lurk in the shadows. Some try to ignore their ghosts, others actively resent them. Some have even made friends with them, but all of them accept their existence as fact. Whatever you feel about ghosts, this book will make you think . . . it will probably also make you look over your shoulder.Aristo-phantoms and the frightfully posh folk haunted by them, As investigated by clairvoyant and determined ghost-hunter Tom Corbett, with Lady Diana on Boswell duties. "I can see ghosts. I haven't got any power over them, like exorcising them or telling them to go away. But if there is a ghost around I can tell you where, and sometimes, what it looks like." Spectres pursued include the Brown Monk of Burford and, in the company of Lord Bath, Christopher Thynne - father of the likewise never knowingly drab Alexander of Blue Blood infamy - Lady Laurisa Carteret, the Green Ghost of Longleat. "Ghosts - well, they are just people who have died and bound themselves, because of great happiness or great tragedy, to a spot of earth."
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Post by Swampirella on Nov 17, 2020 18:28:51 GMT
Diana Norman – The Stately Ghosts of Britain (Frederick Muller, 1972; originally 1963) Photo: Jeremy Grayson: Mr Corbett and the Very Reverend Mother Superior join forces to investigate poltergeist activity at troubled Burford Priory. Introduction
Longleat Littlecote Woburn Abbey Salisbury Hall Sawston Hall Camfield Place and Buriton Manor Penfound Manor West Wycombe Park Brede Burford Priory Beaulieu
ConclusionsBlurb: THE STATELY GHOSTS OF ENGLAND
The English have been haunted too long for their own good. Far too many printless toes have stepped down the lovely corridors of our stately homes with impunity. We have become blasé. We shoulder our way through this perpetual danse macabre with hardly a thought. One man who has given the subject considerable attention, however, is Tom Corbett, whose experiences on a prolonged ghost hunt through England are recorded here by Diana Norman. Pacing the long, dark corridors of mansions like Longleat, Woburn and Beaulieu and walking through quiet, lesser-known manors, Corbett found his ghosts — some terrifying, some friendly and others who were merely lost and bewildered. Most fascinating of all, he uncovered the relationships that exist between the ghosts and their owners. The masters of the stately homes live in a strange, double world where the past survives side by side with the present; where the restless feet of their ancestors tread the floors, where doors swing open mysteriously and shut again, where grey shapes lurk in the shadows. Some try to ignore their ghosts, others actively resent them. Some have even made friends with them, but all of them accept their existence as fact. Whatever you feel about ghosts, this book will make you think . . . it will probably also make you look over your shoulder.Aristo-phantoms and the frightfully posh folk haunted by them, As investigated by clairvoyant and determined ghost-hunter Tom Corbett, with Lady Diana on Boswell duties. "I can see ghosts. I haven't got any power over them, like exorcising them or telling them to go away. But if there is a ghost around I can tell you where, and sometimes, what it looks like." Spectres pursued include the Brown Monk of Burford and, in the company of Lord Bath, Christopher Thynne - father of the likewise never knowingly drab Alexander of Blue Blood infamy - Lady Laurisa Carteret, the Green Ghost of Longleat. "Ghosts - well, they are just people who have died and bound themselves, because of great happiness or great tragedy, to a spot of earth." A so-so book (as I recall) that I had as a teen, gave away 10yrs later, & have put on my Christmas list to get again.
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Post by helrunar on Nov 17, 2020 19:35:08 GMT
Interesting cross that that Nun is wearing. It's worn by some Heathens today. I think of it as the Earth cross but some identify it as the Sunwheel, for which the more common symbol in earlier times is a glyph that will get you labeled a racist/white supremacist if you display it anywhere.
You post such excellent stuff Kev!
cheers, H.
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Post by Dr Strange on Nov 17, 2020 19:47:40 GMT
I suspect the nun may be Irish, and would have said it was a "Celtic cross".
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Post by helrunar on Nov 17, 2020 21:45:44 GMT
Hilarious Father Ted clip, Dr Strange. I never watched that series though I think it did air on a PBS station here at some point.
How APPALLING that I'm projecting my perverted Pagan proclivities onto a good Religious of a Catholic order. Revolting!!!
We aim to please.
H.
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Post by Swampirella on Nov 20, 2020 0:38:01 GMT
This arrived yesterday; I already have a few more than 3 dozen in this series. They're all about 95pg each; packed with b/w photos & background detail. It's easy to pick up and re read one when the mood strikes me.
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Post by helrunar on Nov 20, 2020 1:37:12 GMT
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Post by Swampirella on Nov 20, 2020 2:10:50 GMT
I've heard that phrase too, Steve! In fact, it's about the only thing I did know about Coventry, other than it was heavily bombed during the war, until I started the book half an hour ago.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 21, 2020 11:41:40 GMT
Two old faithfuls; Haunted Houses You May Visit - Mark Plague Pit Ronson in ghost gazetteer mode - came from the sacred shelves of 'Leslies' in Bethnal Green. Uncredited cover photo gives me a Keef vibe. The Andrew Green was withdrawn from Tower Hamlets libraries in 1978 and sold for 40p. Both are contenders for personal top 13 'True Ghost' picks. Marc Alexander – Haunted Houses You May Visit: A Ghostly Guide To Britain’s Haunted Stately Homes (Sphere, 1982) Blurb: Spectral figures, screaming skulls, gliding monks and white ladies – phantom harbingers of doom, avengers of past misdeeds and innocent victims … the whole spectrum of supernatural phenomenon is contained within the precincts of Britain’s stately homes.
Sandford Orcas in Dorset with its fourteen ghosts, including the stinking man, the wicked priest and the screamer … Glamis Castle with its white lady and bloody history … the four Royal ghosts of Windsor …
HAUNTED HOUSES YOU MAY VISIT details the ghostly manifestations in historic houses open to the public – we can’t guarantee that you’ll see a ghost, but at least you’ll know where to look!Andrew Green - Our Haunted Kingdom (Wolfe, 1973). Blurb: In the photograph on the back of this jacket, at an upper window, is the dim shape of what appears to be a young girl. Is it just a trick of the light? Or could it be the ghost of 12-year-old Anne Hinchfield, who in 1887 committed suicide by jumping from a tower of the house in Ealing, London? And was it she who in 1944 tried to persuade Andrew Green to jump from the tower, a tower which had already seen twenty suicides and one murder? The house in Montpeller Road - photographed by the author on the same day as his eerie experience in the tower - is just one of more than 350 haunted sites in what is probably the most comprehensive collection yet of hauntings in the United Kingdom. Our Haunted Kingdom contains only cases authenticated during the last 25 years and includes many previously unpublicised accounts.
One of the most frightening spectres recorded is that of an eighteenth century smuggler who appears in a field at Happisburgh in Norfolk. The horrifying apparition, without legs, and with its grotesquely wobbling head joined to the neck by only a narrow strip of flesh, glides around and finally vanishes at the site of an old well. Under one arm the ghost carries a large bundle containing the hacked remains of his missing limbs.
For ease of reference the accounts are assembled in alphabetical order, segregated into counties and show the sites open to the public, those which can be viewed by appointment and private properties. Directions for finding the haunted areas are given and those personally investigated by the author are indicated.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 21, 2020 19:29:31 GMT
Sunday Mirror, 23 Sept. 1979 News of the World, 21 July 1974 The Geordie Go-Go Ghost and the Gillingham 'Country Matters' (© Midsomer Murders) affair both via Peter Haining's superlative Mammoth Book of True Hauntings (2008) None more haunted. Jack the Ripper, Spring-heeled Jack, the Elephant Man/ Loch Ness Monster, The Ghost Train, The Rats, the Newark Street Poltergeist, the Whitechapel Fatberg, and now this! A Jane Dunford exclusive, The Phantom of the Photo, made lead story in the East End Advertiser, for 24th August 1995.
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