Ghost Hunting in Durham.
The villagers of Birtley, near Newcastle, have been much excited of late by strange sounds heard in the house of a miner named Wild. The walls and roof have been pierced to discover the cause, and the partitions have been smoked, but no discovery has been made. A Central News correspondent telegraphs that he sat up with the ghost to a late hour last night. He heard a cry at intervals; a far away tremulous wailing sound, but saw nothing unusual. Local Spiritualists have expressed a desire to interview the “shade”, but Wild has declined. All kinds of stories are afloat as to the ghost, and crowds assemble nightly outside the house.
Globe, 21st September 1892.
There is a ghost present at a place called Birtley, which I take to be somewhere in the vicinity of Newcastle. Its fame has spread through a whole district; local preachers have heard it and borne witness that it was “not of the earth earthy;” masons have been engaged examining the walls to discover the origin of the eerie sounds; and finally a reporter solemnly testifies to having heard the ghost groan. “It was a sad, wailing, quivering sound which would require a very fine flexible female voice to imitate,” and was also like “a distant foghorn”. A “fine, flexible female voice” which could resemble a “fog horn” would be almost as wonderful as the ghost; and if it were ever to become common, might afford an additional reason “Why young men don’t marry”.
Yorkshire Evening Post, 21st September 1892.
In spite of the spread of education, and the advance of science, belief in ghosts appears to maintain its firmly-seated position in the minds of a small proportion of the inhabitants of these isles. Any sound that cannot be readily accounted for is at once assigned to the agency of ghosts, just as in the Middle Ages any illness in man or beast was assumed to be the work of witchcraft.
The Newcastle colliers have the reputation of being shrewd men, and yet the village of Birtley, near Newcastle, has been thrown into a state of excitement by strange sounds heard in the house of a miner. Crowds assemble nightly outside the door, in hopes of seeing the author of these supernatural disturbances, which, it seems, take the form of a “far-away, tremulous, wailing sound.”
The walls and roof have been pierced and the partitions smoked, but without effect. The local Spiritualists are eager to hold a seance and call up the perturbed spirit; but to this the occupant of the house objects, probably upon the ground that it is bad enough to have the house haunted with noises, without its being made dismally apparent that a ghost has taken up its residence there.
Education is, no doubt, powerful, but superstition has so strong a grasp upon the human mind that it will be a very long time yet before the belief in ghosts is completely eradicated.
London Evening Standard, 22nd September 1892.
Local and District.
Mrs Brown, a local clairvoyant, has discovered that the “ghost” haunting the house of a Birtley miner is that of his first wife!
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 23rd September 1892.
A forlorn ghost!
“The world of the dead is wide,” wrote the first Lord Lytton; “why should the ghosts jostle us?” The extreme pertinency of the question will be admitted. On this small planet of ours there is barely room for the living, and matters would assume a serious aspect if we were much or often occupied by the affairs or reminded of the continued presence of the dead. “All chambers wherein men have lived and died are haunted chambers,” said Longfellow, but he was thinking of memories and sorrows, not of such mysterious beings as a former ghostly tenant of Willington Mill.
The idea that the spirits of persons deceased linger about the places in which they have spent their lives, attempting now and then to make their presence known, by means of inexplicable noises, or “by swinging a picture,” as a recent publication on the subject said, is not only uncanny in itself, but is a degradation of all reasonable ideas as to the character of a future life. If this were the ordinary occupation of the dead their condition would be pitiable. Could there be any more depressing narrative than that which comes from Birtley, for instance?
There are certain inexplicable noises in a house, and just because of this lack of other explanation they are supposed to be produced by a ghost. The Spiritualists take the matter up, hold a seance in the haunted domicile, and are instructed on the subject of the haunting through a medium, and by a spirit called Flossie.
We have an impression that we have heard of Flossie before.She speaks in broken English, and so did a certain familiar who was a great favourite at the Spiritualistic meeting-place in Newcastle fifteen or sixteen years ago. Perhaps the name of the sprite was Flossie in that case also. At any rate, we call to mind a dictum on the subject of Spiritualism, delivered through a medium in Weir’s Court, and the language seems to be identical in style with that which was employed at the Birtley seance.
“If it is the truth,” ran this expression of ghostly philosophy, “it’ll tand; and if it isn’t the truth it’ll only tand a little bit.” [sic] Flossie, if it be the same Flossie, has not improved her style of utterance in the long interval that has elapsed since these remarkable words were spoken. “Me see a woman sitting by the fire,” she said at Birtley. It was a sad woman – a woman resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, and it was – the ghost. The seance made the cause of the Birtley haunting clear enough to the Spiritualists. Flossie’s explanation was that the unhappy woman by the fire – “she be very agitated,” said Flossie, falling into the Staffordshire manner of speaking – was the first wife of the occupant of the haunted domicile. The immediate inference is that the miserable-seeming ghost is dissatisfied with the second marriage; but, luckily for the peace of mind of a doubtless estimable couple, Flossie testifies to the contrary.
This is not an aggrieved ghost, we are assured. Neither the marriage itself nor the treatmen tof the children is the occasion of the inconvenient and disturbing visitation .The truth of the matter is that the sad spectre who sits before the fire “does not seem to realise that she has yet crossed the bourne” – has not become aware, that is to say, that she is dead. An extraordinary and painful solution! Should there actually be any ghosts in this miserable situation they merit our tears.
But before making Flossie’s revelation the basis of speculations on the character of the future life it will be well to wait a little. Some other explanation of the Birtley haunting may be forthcoming. Flossie is a success from the dramatic point ofview, no doubt; but is she trustworthy? Is it not probable, on the contrary, that the noises in the house at Birtley may prove to have had some purely mundane origin, and that the forlorn spectre before the fire may be the creation of a heated or credulous imagination working upon one or two facts that are within the cognisance of the neighbourhood.
Shields Daily Gazette, 23rd September 1892.