The “Daily Mail” Investigates The Lamberhurst “Ghost.”
We quote the following from Monday’s “Daily Mail”:-
Strange, unaccountable things are befalling in the neighbourhood of Lamberhurst, Kent. The villagers, who in the midst of their laughter exhibit unmistakable symptoms of fear, are convinced that they are sheltering one of the most enterprising, audacious, and mysterious working “ghosts” recorded in the annals of the unseen.
If “ghost” it be – and the word of the persons chiefly concerned can only be accepted on this point – the visitant has displayed the greatest discrimination in the choice of its field of operations. Lamberhurst is an old-time cluster of cottages, Elizabethan for the most part, lying midway between Horsmonden and Goudhurst. Two miles further on is the Furnace Mill, owned by Mr J.C. Playfoot, a well-to-do farmer and hopgrower. Here the “ghost” has established its headquarters.
Furnace Mill lies in a wooded hollow, a quarter of a mile from the main road. It is flanked by a darksome lake, in which the tall elms that fringe it cast shadowy reflections. The trickling of a cascade and the calls of bird to bird are the only sounds that disturb the silence. No other dwelling is visible. Altogether an eminently-appropriate home for a “ghost.”
Mr Playfoot, a matter-of-fact, business-like man, recounted with some reluctance his weird experiences to a “Daily Mail” representative; “for,” he said, “already the news has got abroad, and last Sunday hundreds of people from the towns and villages for miles around invaded my place to look for the ‘ghost.’ Whatever the thing may be,” he went on, “that is playing the very mischief with my place, it operates only in the daytime and under the very noses of myself and other members of the family who are looking out for it.
“It is important to know that I have not discharged anyone, that this place can only be reached by a private road, that the approach of any stranger would be disputed by two watchdogs that would not stand on any ceremony, and that I carry in my own pockets the keys of the mill, stables, hayrooms and other buildings.
“Despite all these precautions, locked and bolted doors swing open, the horses are changed from stable to stable, are sometimes turned round in their stalls so that their backs are against the mangers, and are often soon to run shivering and startled from their stables into the road. Bales of hay are cut and scattered about the hayrooms, the contents of sacks in the drying-room are emptied and changed about, while in the tool-house barrels of lime weighing hundredweights are flung down a flight of stairs. These and many other strange things happen in rooms that are locked, barred and bolted, while people watch and listen outside, and the keys are in my pockets. Nobody and nothing is ever seen or heard.”
Then Mr Playfoot detailed what was, perhaps, the strangest “manifestation” of all. “About noon a few days ago,” he said, “in the presence of my son, I locked and bolted every building on the premises and went into the mill-house for dinner. Suddenly I heard a startled cry from the lad, and rushing into the yard saw the door of the drying-room, only about ten yards away, wide open. Within the room I heard the shouts of the lad, but before I could reach him the door silently closed. I seized the handle. The door was locked! My son was a prisoner inside. The key of the room was in my pocket. I unlocked the door and entered the room. Nobody was there except my son standing on the stairs frightened and pale.”
Young Playfoot, a bright lad about fifteen years of age, corroborated this strange story. “As soon as I had entered the room,” he added, “I saw the door closed in some mysterious way. The latch rattles and the lock creaks, but, although I stood only a foot or two away, neither the latch nor the lock made the least sound.”
“I could not have believed it if I had not been there,” supplemented Mr Playfoot.
A strong-man feat performed by the “ghost” was the overturning of a large water-butt – a veritable Sandow from spirit-land.
One morning, according to Mr Playfoot, as he was working near one of the stables, the lock was screwed off. He substituted a bolt. Shortly afterwards he found that the bolt had been removed and the lock neatly restored to its place. “And yet I saw nothing,” he said, as he wearily drew his hand across his puzzled brow.
Mr Playfoot conducted the “Daily Mail” representative to one of the stables. The double doors were locked and bolted, and the entrance was spanned by a stout timber bar secured by a hidden fastening designed by the mill-owner in the hope of circumventing the “ghost”. In the stable was a grey mare. “Now such strange things had happened to this horse,” he said, “that one day I decided to watch the stable closely. I made everything secure and put the keys in my pockets. Presently I crossed over from where I was standing, and unlocking the stable door, looked in. The stable was empty. I found the horse in an adjoining hayroom, which was padlocked.
“How the horse got there – how it got through a communicating door scarcely wide enough to allow a man to pass – how it got up the steps – all these things are beyond me. If they had been done by human agency (and I hesitate to believe in ghosts) I must have seen or heard something, for I was only a yard or two away. In ordinary circumstances the stamp of the horse’s hoofs on the wooden floor of the hayroom would have reached me. Besides, although the doors must have been unlocked and re-locked, I had all the keys in my pockets. It is impossible that there can be duplicates.”
The police have attempted to investigate the circumstances, but without any result. They are as mystified as Mr Playfoot. Meanwhile, something like alarm exists among the scattered inhabitants of Lamberhurst, Horsmonden and Goudhurst, and they hope that the “ghost,” as they firmly believe it to be, will confine its operations to Furnace Mill.
Kent and Sussex Courier, 1st June 1906.
Motley Notes – By Keble Howard.
Nothing more delightful has appeared in the newspapers for some time past than the story of “The Ghost of Furnace Mill.” The ordinary ghost is played out. Christmas Numbers have made him so familiar, with his transparent body and clanking chains, and ivy-mantled towers and dark picture-galleries, and low moans and all the rest of the old-fashioned nonsense, that the smallest child whose beautiful golden tresses were ever tied up in rags treats the thing with contempt.
But “The Ghost of Furnace Mill” is original. In the first place, he gets his job done in the daytime instead of bothering to be out at night. Then there is nothing gloomy about him. He is a humorous ghost. He makes for fun and laughter. The newspapers describe him as “enterprising and audacious,” and they are fully justified. Again, “The Ghost of Furnace Mill” is invisible. After all, when you come to think of it, there is something dreadfully undignified about a ghost allowing himself to be seen. With the old-fashioned ghost this was probably due to conceit. All ghosts, you know, are confirmed egotists. It is their own affair that bothers them; you never heard a ghost alluding to anybody else’s troubles. And it is conceit that makes them talk in that slow, silly, self-important way so admired of our grandfathers. “The Ghost of Furnace Mill,” on the other hand, is a jolly, unaffected, invisible fellow.
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If Farmer Playfoot takes my advice, he will advertise “The Ghost of Furnace Mill” in all the London dailies (it has been pretty well advertised already, by the way), and organise daylight seances at five shillings a head. He would find it far more paying than farming.
The Sketch, 6th June 1906.
Ghosts. Weird Story from a Kentish Farm.
The November number of the “Occult Review” contains an article entitled: “Some Psychic Incidents,” in the course of which the writer recalls some weird events that show that ghosts operate as easily in the daytime as at night. The scene of these disturbances was Furnace Mill, near the little village of Lamberhurst, Kent.
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The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages were greatly excited and even alarmed over these weird disturbances. They feared the ghost might visit them also. Eventually the manifestations ceased entirely as suddenly as they began.
Gravesend and Northfleet Standard, 17th November 1911.