A phantom’s last gallop.
Ornaments smashed, furniture moved – then silence!
The archaeological explanation.
By our Petersfield correspondent.
A cottage with a reputation.
Learned archaeologists who visited an old cottage down in Harting Coombe, near Petersfield, not long ago were told that the occupants frequently complained of being disturbed in their sleep by a ghost which, although it never showed itself, made its presence felt by creating an eerie sound like the wild galloping of horses. They were assured that during the last 100 years this strange phenomenon had driven out three or four different families who attempted to make the cottage their home, and were told of quite a number of inhabitants in the locality who were prepared to swear that the place was haunted; but, like all good archaeologists, they thought scientifically, and that often has the effect of spoiling even the very best of ghost stories, especially in country districts. “Ghosts be hanged!” they said, after looking round the ancient building. “The sound is quite easily explained. It must be caused by a subterranean stream which at certain times of the year can probably be heard flowing underneath the cottage.” And off they went back to their homes in London, happy in the belief that they had “laid” the phantom for ever.
The archaeologists’ theory impressed at the time, but that is not the end of the story. Several years went by, adn a few of the inhabitants round about continued to have their doubts, until one gloomy autumn morning a woman, then living in the cottage, declared that after hearing a repetition of the ghostly sound, she went into the living room and found that a valuable ornament which had stood on the mantelpiece for years had been dashed to the brick floor and smashed into tiny pieces.s
She described how a beef-extract bottle standing near the ornament and containing flowers had suffered a similar fate; and the curious part about the crockery smashing was that the treasured ornament appeared to have been whisked off the shelf in an opposite direction to the bottle. There was no one downstairs at the time who could have been responsible for the breakage, and it looked as if some strange force had suddenly arisen between the two vessels, causing them to repel one another. What was that force?
As one who has no real reason for disbelieving country folk, I am inclined to respect their views that there was at one time something unusual about the cottage: but if some hard-headed archaeologist writes to me and starts up the underground stream theory again, I shall not be a bit surprised. In case the present occupiers of the cottage should get alarmed, I must explain that according to my information nothing untoward has happened there for the last three or four years, so perhaps the ghost has had its last gallop, or, as the archaeologists might put it, the underground stream has ceased to make itself apparent.
We must not disregard the possibility that a water diviner might be of some use in explaining the reputation which the cottage gained for itself in years gone by, but really it all makes such a thrilling story that if the existence of the stream were definitely established the old folk of the district, who recount the legend as told them by their parents, would be bitterly disappointed.
The other day I went down among the Coombe trees to have a look at the cottage, adn the first thing that impressed me was the dampness of the atmosphere around the place. The occupant told me that one of the rooms on the ground floor could not be used because of this dampness. The dwelling is essentially practical in its design. The front door opens on to the kitchen, and after that comes the living room. Outside, in a shed adjoining the cottage, is a huge old open fireplace, complete with brick oven. Here, as a contrast, the atmosphere is enriched with the homely odour of chopped wood. Ascending the darkened stairs of the cottage, I found old-fashioned bedroom doors that open by lifting the latch with a thin rope threaded through the woodwork, and the quaint wooden designing on one of the bedroom walls told plainly of the dwelling’s antiquity. Beauty hedges the cottage on all sides, and every window looks out on dense woodlands. Beyond a five-barred gate runs a narrow road that leads up from the Coombe to the Hampshire boundary and the Portsmouth Road. Such is the setting for what is, at any rate, a remarkable ghost story, if not a true one.
I may be wrong, but I have always been of the opinion that it would take a lot to make a policeman believe in the existence of a phantom. Robert is not the sort of man to get all worked up over a ghost story that is based merely on hearsay. I therefore attach a good deal of importance to the fact that a hefty Metropolitan policemen once declared the cottage to be haunted. This was some years ago, when the place was run by a woman who took in lodgers. The police officer (I shall not disclose his rank) chose the dwelling in which to spend his leave; but, according to what I was told, the mysterious sound of galloping horses which he heard in the cottage at night-time worried him so much that he cleared out within a few days, and the language which he used in making his hurried departure is also not for publication. There are plenty of motorists I know who would readily agree that policemen have powerful imaginations, but in this case I submit it would take something more than imagination to induce a man to alter his plans in the middle of his holiday.
Then there is the story of three burly woodmen who once had their lodgings in the cottage and who were so terrified that they left within a week or two, declaring the place to be haunted with runaway horses! This was all very comforting for the woman who kept loding house while her husband was away at the Front! Her story of what used to go on in the cottage was to the effect that these odd noises only came at the fall. It was when the nights began to draw in adn the woods grew silent in preparation for winter that the sound resembling the “thunder of many hoofs” echoed through the ancient rooms, lasting only a few seconds and ceasing as suddenly as it had begun. Invariably, she claimed, at such times furniture was found to have been slightly moved, as though jarred out of position. If the cottage stood on the edge of the Portsmouth road the heavy trams could be blamed for the disturbance, but actually it is built some distance from the thoroughfare.
Like the archaeologists whose opinion I quoted earlier on, I tried to find some sensible reason for these stories, adn one significant discovery I made was that the cottage stands on what used to be a smugglers’ parthway. You can never get away from the smugglers in these parts. The cottage is reputed to have once been the scene of a fight among several men who were discussing the sale of some smuggled liquor. One night in the dwelling’s low-ceilinged living room savage oaths paved the way for a drunken brawl. Then, as usual, came bloodshed. One of the law-breakers, believed to have been the occupier of the cottage as the time, was cruelly murdered, and his slayers fled from the scene of their crime on horseback, leaving the body to rot in an old well among the woods.
So, you see, there are two sides to the story of this little homestead. If you wish, you can quite easily believe that there was once an underground waterway there that caused the place to shake at a certain time in the year. You can blame that for the sound of galloping horses, and you can say it was also responsible for the broken ornaments. On the other hand, there are the conflicting tales of the old folk, all of whom seem to be agreed as to the sound of something rushing along at high speed – like smugglers fleeing from justice.
All these stries have not the slightest effect on the present occupier, Mrs Albury, who, with her rosy-cheeked children, has lived there for two years, during which time, they say, no ghost has ever bothered them. “We are told the place is haunted,” Mrs Albury said, “but don’t you believe it. Things may have happened here years ago, but that is all over and done with.”
This is not the only legend that is “all over and done with.” Such traditions have been fading away from our countryside for years now. It is just a sign of the times. Not many of us nowadays have much time to think about the past and its vagaries; we are all much too worried about the present and the future. No wonder the ghost has got tired of furniture moving. – W.G. F.
Hampshire Telegraph, 10th March 1933.