Seasonable and startling intelligence has just reached me from Horspath, a quiet but somewhat isolated village, well-known to many of your readers as situated within a couple of miles of the Wheatley railway station and an hour’s sharp walk in a south-easterly direction from our famous city. This intelligence is decidedly supernatural, and will, therefore, be likely to add wonderfully to the charm of the neighbourhood in these dark December nights on the eve of Christmas-tide. But a little more than a year ago I told the tale of a ghost at Cowley; now I have to ask the reader’s patience while I recount the doings of another apparition in this the adjoining village, which has even attracted the serious attention of the clergy of that and the neighbouring parishes, and created no small sensation in the minds of the simple village folk, some of whom are firm believers in this ghostly visitant.
When the news came to hand curiosity prompted me to take a walk that way. On the spot I was credibly informed that about a month since the worthy master of the parochial school, while in the solitary occupation of the dwelling which adjoins the school-house (situated in a lonely elevated spot called Claypit, by the ancient Church), was disturbed during the night by strange noises issuing from the schoolroom. Unable to discover any cause for these unearthly sounds, he appears to have been suddenly seized with the horrible thought that it must be a ghost “revisiting the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous.”
The following evening the strange noises (consisting of the rattling of latches, violent shaking of doors, and heavy footsteps passing up and down the school-room floor) were repeated, and utterly failing to discover any clue to the mystery, the affrighted schoolmaster went into the village, and sought and obtained the companionship of two doughty villagers, yclept Joseph Hinton and Harry Kimber, who have since slept nightly at the house as a protective measure.
Nevertheless, the mysterious noises recur nightly, after 6 o’clock, when the schoolmaster is in residence. As time wears on the excitement in the village increases, and the most remarkable part of the story is that about a fortnight ago the estimable curate in charge of the parish, residing at the vicarage, did I am assured, in his desire to unravel the mystery, call to his assistance the vicar of a neighbouring parish and a chaplain of one of the principal colleges in Oxford, together with some other clergymen, who arrived in cabs one evening at the witching hour.
I am further told that after listening to the noises and the heavy and regular footfall which fairly shook the haunted building to its very foundation, some one of the party attempted to “lay” the ghost in the approved style, when “Holy water was sprinkled, And little bells tinkled,” to exorcise the dreaded apparition. The clerical gentlemen, however, seem to have finally taken their departure in an unsatisfied state of mind, accompanied with a vague feeling of alarm.
The schoolmaster having, after this, sought a change of air and scene in Oxford for a week, returned a few days back, only to find the ghost still in possession. On Tuesday evening last upwards of a dozen juvenile villagers, with the schoolmaster and the schoolmistress, supported by a pupil teacher of each sex, mustered at the school house, to watch as had been their wont, when shortly after 6 o’clock the re-appearance of the ghost was first announced by Bessie Cooling, one of the pupil teachers, who declared to her timid companions that she not only heard it but distinctly saw it. She could only make out the body with enormously big eyes, but whether man or woman she could not tell.
William Lambourne, the other pupil teacher, and a little girl confirmed this description, but the door of the passage in which the ghost was said to have appeared being hastily shut by the other watchers, the dreadful apparition only manifested its presence to the rest by repeating its mysterious noises in the school-room. The whole of the affrighted party then hurried away in a body to the vicarage, and was hastily accompanied back by the Rev. Henry Cruikshank, the esteemed curate, who was as perplexed as ever as to the cause of the undiscoverable noises, which at all events were unmistakable.
With all due deference to those persons who believe in a bona fide ghost, the only conclusion that I and most of your readers can arrive at, is that some clever trickster is playing off a practical joke on the less cunning inhabitants, whose organ of wonder is unduly developed. The credulity of some persons is, as Dominie Sampson hath it, – “prodigious!” By the bye, what is the real opinion of the Dominie in question?
Oxfordshire Weekly News, 24th December 1873.
On the 20th of last month I recounted the alleged doings of a ghost at Horspath School-house, which created a great deal of alarm in the minds of many of the simple village folk, and attracted the serious attention of some of the clergy of the neighbourhood. I then insinuated that there was a ghostly manifestation only when the schoolmaster (Mr Evans) was in residence. This seemed to my mind such a remarkable coincidence that I ventured to ask what was the real opinion of the Domine in this supernatural visitation.
A few days afterwards the worthy schoolmaster honoured the O.T. office with a visit to point out a few trifling discrepancies in my paragraph (which in the main was correct); to ask that further publicity may not be given to the matter; and to assure Jack O’Lantern that the dreaded apparition had been seen on the memorable Tuesday evening (December 16th) not only by three of the persons assembled but also by himself and five others! He further remarked that the premises had been most mysteriously haunted for months before; that he had seen the school-house doors open gently, and quickly, without any apparent cause, and on more than one occasion a huge basket placed by invisible hands in a doorway, access to which could not be obtained without his knowledge.
He did not believe it to be the result of practical joking, and professed to be quite unable to give any satisfactory explanation. Nevertheless, it is worth recording that there has been no ghostly manifestation since Christmas week, when the schoolmaster left Horspath, having resigned his appointment there for a better one at Dunmow, Essex.
After public notice in this column had been taken of the supernatural event crowds visited the school-house at the witching hour: “The time when screech-owls cry and bandogs howl, And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves.” And if the ghost was invisible it was heard, at least by the juveniles who generally mustered in strong force, and some of whom on more than one occasion left their caps and bonnets behind in their fright, to be recovered the next morning as best they may.
On the Monday evening following the publication of the intelligence in the O.T., a villager was found valiant enough to undertake single-handed to lay the ghost. This hero, John Sheppard by name, described as a gardener, arranged to be the sole occupant of the haunted premises that evening, in the temporary absence of the schoolmaster at Culham College, and this is the substance of his report to me:
– Between 9 and 10 p.m. he got the key of the premises, and accompanied by a witness, named Frederick Burgess, he unlocked the school-house door and entered for the purpose of proving the ghostly presence. He left his witness, Burgess, by the fireplace in the schoolmaster’s room while he explored the whole premises. After satisfying himself that no other living being, save a cat and some mice, were there, and that the doors and windows were all properly secured, he sent Burgess away with a request that he should be called in the morning at 6.30.
Now left alone in the house he esconced himself comfortably by the fire in the above room, and over the calumet of peace patiently waited for the ghostly manifestation for about three quarters of an hour, but nothing occurring to disturb the quietude of the place, he laid himself between the sheets of the schoolmaster’s comfortable bed and quickly fell into the arms of Morpheus, until between one and two o’clock in the morning, when he got up and found the clock stopped at 1-8, and the stillness of the night broken only by the cat chasing mice. He then returned to bed and having waited sometime to lay the artful ghost, again fell asleep and remained in that somnolent condition until five, from which time until 6.30 he listened vainly as before for the coming of the apparition, and then got up and left the key at the King’s Head Inn, near by, for the landlord’s little daughter to take it back to the Vicarage. Our hero has since referred the doughty Schoolmaster to the 4th Chapter of the Book of Job, and the 12th Chapter of Ecclesiastes. He stoutly denies the possibility of such an apparition. The superstitious villagers are beginning to suspect that they may have been befooled. It is remarkable that such stories invariably reach one second-hand. they “come like shadows; so depart!”.
Oxfordshire Weekly News, 21st January 1874.
Ghosts, as we all know, like sea-serpents, are apt to recur at stated intervals. There is always at least oe sea-serpent during the “silly season,” and with the approach of winter the ghost becomes rampageous. This year, so I am informed, the redoubtable Horspath Ghost has actually reappeared in Horspath School-house, where he played such high jinks some few years back, and which I very fully detailed at the time to the infinite amusement of sceptical readers.
Fortunately for this little village, which nestles so pleasantly, though so lonely, under Great Shotover, it is blessed with a cleric who treats ghosts quite aux serieux, and can perceive nothing laughable in the notion of exorcising them in the good old style. On dit that this pious and worthy gentleman, who bears the nomenclature of the best of English comic illustrators, has been greatly exercised lately since the reappearance of the Ghost in the parish school-house. I am told that at length the prolonged resusitation of the atmospheric demon induced him the other day to bolt away from the village into Oxford, to consult a Ritualistic authority, on the shortest and easiest method of dealing with an indivisibility, which, contrary to Cocker, persisted in assuming tangible form.
I am assured that the said Ritualistic authority was quite equal to the occasion. He prescribed according to Roman Catholic practice, and the receipt of that most solemn divine, Thomas Ingoldsby, and accordingly the worthy cleric returned to Horspath, and, rumour declares, the Bell, the Book and the Candle were duly requisitioned, and amid the impressive ceremonial the Ghost, of course, evaporated completely.
That is to say, he – the Ghost – would have made himself scarce but for the fact that he really never had a material or immaterial existence. His identity was established some time back either by a former weak-minded and superstitious parish pedagogue (who assured me in propia personae of his implicit belief in the said ghost), or by a party who happened to be suffering from a complaint usually superinduced by total “non-abstinence,” and ever since then Horspath has been more or less exercised – spell it with an “e”, not an “o,” Mr Printer – by a dread of the supernatural.
The Ghost, be it remembered, selected the Schoolmaster’s house as his venue, andthe grossly sceptical villagers are beginning to hint that if the School Board got as far as Horspath there would be no more Ghosts. Anyway, the connection between cause and effect in this mysterious affair has been accurately traced, and joking apart, the Ghost has no more real existence than the apparitions at the Polytechnic, or the illusions of Maskeyline and Cooke. The best “bell, book and candle” to exorcise such an absurdity is British common sense, a quality in which the sceptical Horspath villagers are not quite so deficient as are some of their friends among the Ritualistic fraternity.
Oxfordshire Weekly News, 28th November 1877.