Joseph Braddock - Haunted Houses of Great Britain

[dem bones]

Joseph Braddock - Haunted Houses of Great Britain (Dorset, 1991: originally Batsford, 1956)
Illustrated by Felix Kelly

Felix Kelly

Preface
List of illustrations
The Fringe of the Unknown
Ghosts at Burghwallis Hall, Yorkshire
Some Haunted Castles
A West Country Ghost Hunt
Miscellaneous Poltergeists
Brede Place, Rye and Reyson's Farm
The Cheltenham Ghost: Mrs. Gaskell's Ghost Story, and a Spanish Coda
Evil Hauntings
The Remarkable Mongoose
Theatre Ghosts
Haunted Pubs and the Runcorn Poltergeist
Photographs of Ghosts and Conclusion

Blurb:
Joseph Braddock believes in "a world of spirit which is just as real as this one." Although, to his regret, he has never actually seen a ghost, his steadfast belief is evident throughout Haunted Houses of Great Britain. Many of Mr. Braddock's tales of hauntings are quite unfamiliar. There are stories of Haunted Castles and Haunted Pubs; of North-Country and West-country ghosts; of Theatre Ghosts, Evil hauntings, Poltergeists and Photographs of Ghosts. Braddock relates them all with a great degree of literary skill, but in the end he is content to say: "I should like to ask the reader to try and keep an open mind as to the truth, or otherwise, of each tale of haunting; while, if possible, accepting the principle of the supremacy of the World of Spirit over the world of matter ..."

Joseph Braddock has been a student of psychical research and of the occult for many years, but he regards himself primarily as a poet. He has published a number of books of poetry, a verse play and also an autobiographical work.

Felix Kelly is an artist with a high degree of imaginative sympathy for the supernatural. Skilful and decorative in themselves, his pictures have an even more important quality as hauntingly beautiful evocations of the spirit of Joseph Braddock's text.

This really is a lovely book, not just for the delightful illustrations but the author's enthusiasm for his subject. Been dipping in and out of it in between books and a favourite chapter to date is that concerning the ghosts of Brede Place, Rye and Reyson's Farm. Prominent amongst Brede's alleged phantoms, the sixteenth century's Sir Goddard Oxenbride, who provided Brede Place a modern Tudor makeover. Less commendably, he was said to dine on the flesh of infants until the locals got fed up with it and sawed him in half at Groaning Bridge. "Such nonsensical stories are still mentioned in the village to this day," writes Mrs. Clare Sheridan, in My Crowded Sanctuary, 1945, the legend having been encouraged down the centuries by several generations of smugglers. According to the supremely unreliable R. Thurston Hopkins, another Oxenbride was murdered over a boundary dispute with a neighbour named Cheney, who crept into his room one night and stabbed him as he slept. A maidservant eventually discovered her master/ lover's corpse in the belfry of the local church five years after he vanished. Now it was the Oxenbridge's turn to strike, burning down the Cheney house and dragging the killer to the church tower, where he was be bound to a clapper and rung to death. Although Mrs. Sheridan, the sculptor cousin of Winston Churchill, is having none of this particular "pretty story," Braddock is keen to stress her willingness to vouch for such others amongst other Brede's spectral inhabitants as "Martha," the tree spirits, and a "Father John."

Felix Kelly

[enoch]

Love that jacket art, and the interior illustrations are even better!