The Ghost at Lufton.
A visit to the haunted house.
“An old lady in black.”
Also “A sort of dog”.
One of our Reporters has been to “see the ghost;” and he describes his experience as follows:
Although of pretty strong nerves I confess my Tuesday evening’s adventure was not calculated to strengthen them. It was this confidence in the strength of my nerves that led me to investigate the mystery surrounding the Lufton ghost. As reported in last Monday’s Yeovil Leader it is evident that the ghost is no ordinary one, and perhaps to show this it will be best if I describe my evening’s adventure from the beginning.
My enquiries led me first of all to Higher Odcombe, where surrounded by his family, I found the man who was the first to notice the Lufton ghost. He was a short, thick-set man, with firm mouth and a wealth of black hair, and to me looked the last man to be frightened by a ghost. “Yes,” he said, “I lived at the house, and I can only tell you what my wife and I heard. We never saw anything. It was about six months ago, there or thereabouts, that I took my wife to live there. A fortnight after we got there my wife complained to me that somebody used to come and shake and knock the back door of the house. Whatever it was it seemed to take hold of the latch and shake it viciously and then rap the door as if asking for admittance.”
“I used to tell him we might have a carpenter’s shop at the back door,” put in the lady in question.
“It was during the night these things occurred, I suppose?” I ventured.
“It used to come in the day time as well,” the lady replied.
“Well, yes,” continued my informant, “the missus used to hear the noise after we were in bed and used to wake me up. But one night, I remember, I was sitting in the kitchen smoking a pipe before going to bed, and I heard steps, heavy steps too, come up the path outside. I waited for the person, whoever it was, to come and knock the door, but as they did not do this I took my lantern and a couple of good sticks and walked round the house. But nothing could I find. My nerves are pretty strong, and if I had seen anything that night something would have gone or else the stick must have broken. It was these trampings round the house that we used to hear. One night the cows from the adjoining field got over into the path and kicked up an awful row, and I thought perhaps it might be the cows that night, but saw nothing at all. That’s what I could never make out, I never saw anything.”
“Nor did I,” added the woman with a shudder, “but the window used to be rattled after we were gone to bed.”
“You do not think it could have been boys or anybody sky-larking” I asked, somewhat surprised at the turn the tale was taking.
“I don’t think it could have been boys or I should have been bound to see them when I walked round the house with my lantern” he replied.
What is the ghost said to be – male or female?” I questioned.
“Well they say it’s a woman dressed in black, with great glittering eyes,” the woman replied; “but we never saw it, so of course I cannot say.”
I felt a cold shiver run down my spine as I thought of having to get to Lufton, the scene of this weird story. “If you like I’ll walk down to the house with you, as you are anxious to see it,” my informant generously offered, probably noticing my hesitancy. I accepted his offer promptly, thinking of those lonely lanes between Odcombe and Lufton. I do not know whether the tale of the ghost had anything to do with it, but I discovered that my teeth were chattering, and I was only too glad to accept my friend’s companionship.
“They do say there is money in the house,” said my companion, when we had got outside, he armed with a handy little stick about the size of a broomstick, and I pushing my bicycle, the lamp of which afforded little light on those dark, lonely roads. “But devil-a-bit did I come across, although I had a look for it. There was a loose stone in the pantry and this the ghost was supposed to lift up, and so enter the house. But though I lifted it myself I could find nothing.”
We tramped along through the slippery mud until near the bridge which spans the railway from Yeovil to Montacute. Some 200 yards from the bridge, and on the left coming towards Yeovil, is a stile, and over this, and the dozen steps which led to a footpath field below, I carried my bicycle. Still having the ghost uppermost in his thoughts, my companion told me how when passing my companion told me how when passing that very stile one night last summer he saw something white leaning over it. “I wished it good night,” he said, “but it looked straight at me and then suddenly disappeared. I don’t mind telling you if my boots could have carried me faster I should have got to Odcombe quicker than I did that night.”
On we walked for some two hundred yards across a winding footpath overhung with trees, and then the path took a sudden drop. At the foot of this was a gate, and through this we made our way to the cottage. Parallel with the footpath across which we had come, and under a small bridge on which was the gate, ran a gully, through which at one time undoubtedly water flowed. But it is now practically dry and is thickly grown with ivy. One theory has it that the ghost comes from this gully.
On the left is the cottage. We entered a small wicket gate and walked up the steep winding path, formed of slabs of stone, and were about to knock for admittance at the back door, but were forbidden by a business-looking garden fork, which was fixed, points up, to pierce any person who happened to walk against it in the dark. Over the door was suspended a reaping hook which would undoubtedly fall upon anyone who shook that door. Unwilling to run the risk of an accident, with my companion, I turned to the front door. I walked cautiously and was just able to save myself from falling over a piece of wire which had been fixed across the path to trip our friend the ghost. Once more avoiding this trap we walked up to the front door. We reached it this time, but before we had a chance to knock for admittance, a deep voice from within challenged us, “Who’s there?”
Apparently having satisfied the occupant of the house that we were flesh and blood and not the ghost, our friend the landlord unbarred the door, but bade us wait a minute until he could take away the scythe which was fixed edge up under the small porch over the front door. I quickly explained my mission, and with my companion was asked into a roomy kitchen.
And one of the most weird stories I have ever heard he told me. At the outset he satisfied my enquiries by declaring that the ghost was an old woman, with wizened face and “all of a heap,” “with blazing black eyes.” These eyes seemed as if spurting out of her head. “I tell ‘e what ’tis” he said. “I believe ’tis some sort of witchcraft.”
And then he launched into several adventures which he had had with the ghost. He told me how one night, about a fortnight ago, the gardener on the estate, the gardener’s man, and the estate coachman came down to the house armed with a gun each and waited for the midnight visitor. They had given the present occupier’s wife – who, by the way, told me that she didn’t intend to be frightened by the ghost – instructions that as soon as the ghost appeared and tapped the bedroom window – this appears to have been its usual procedure – she should open the window. The three “guns” took up positions, sheltered by the trees that surround the house, but for some time nothing happened. At length, however, the window opened, and the coachman “let go” at the mystic something. Whether his aim was bad or not the ghost, now in the form of “a sort of dog,” was seen to hurry past the front door and disappear into nothingness over the railings which surround the garden.
On another night a whole party of “rowdies” took up a position near the house, but as they wiled away the wee sma’ hours with “music and song,” the ghost, probably disgusted, did not appear that night. Its latest ghostly fad is to come to the front door of the house and knock loudly three times, and after the occupants have gone to bed, to repeat the performance on the bedroom door.
But the old man vehemently denied that the ghost had stopped the train from Yeovil to Montacute one morning. “But,” said he with a chuckle, “I’ve got a pistol and some powder and about 4 pound of shot inside.”
With this I bade him good-night, and with my companion had a look through the gully, but like the occupants during the past fortnight I saw nothing. And I had to cycle to Yeovil after that!
Western Chronicle, 18th November 1904.
The Ghost Story.
There is much that is vague about the Lufton ghost story. People who hear noises and see eyes glaring through the dark may feel that they are in the presence of the supernatural; but it is easier to know a ghost when you see it. We do not gather that anything very ghoulish has occurred. Tramping feet and rattling windows and doors are common things on windy nights. There are plenty of stray cats and dogs at Lufton no doubt. What seems most remarkable of all is the sincere belief some of the villagers hold in the actuality of the “spirit”.
This week our reporter tells of one old lady, formerly a tenant in the house, who was never without her Bible, and to whom the slightest levity in speaking of the “spirit” is still shocking. Even the present tenants have set up around the cottage a barricade of edged and pointed tools in the superstition that spirits never pass such sharp objects. It does not occur to them that if a spirit can creep past closed doors and windows, knock at a bedroom and disappear by the same narrow means, it can also find a way between garden forks and scythes and reaping-hooks.
The only sensible thing done was the act of the squire’s coachman, who sat up one night and fired at Something. The Something turned out to be a skulking dog. But the spirit has not appeared since that explosive moment.
Western Chronicle, 25th November 1904.
Spirit or screech owl?
More about the Lufton ghost.
An old lady’s belief.
A week ago last Tuesday a Chronicle reporter visited the house said to be haunted by the Lufton Ghost, and his evening’s adventure was not quite so exciting as before.
Hearing that my report did not cover all the doings of the Lufton ghost, I resolved, he says, to further probe the mystery, and accordingly I set out for Higher Odcombe. In attributing the discovery of the ghost to my friend who visited the house with me last week, I have erred. He was not the first to notice it, but he took the house after another tiller of the soil had vacated it, driven away by the mysterious visitations of the ghost.
It was to this gentleman and his wife that I directed my steps on Tuesday evening. It may seem strange that my enquiries, as last week, were made on a Tuesday. I hasten to explain that as I came out of it safely one Tuesday, I felt the chances were in favour of my doing so again. Tuesday is my lucky day.
In Cherry Lane I found the house where dwelt the man whom I had come to see. I rapped as politely as I could upon the door. In answer it was opened by an alert little lady who informed me that her husband was at home. What did I want him for? I explained as briefly as possible the object of my visit, and was met with a long-drawn out, horrified, sort of “Oh-h-h”.
“It is a thing I should not like to say anything at all about,” was all that I could get from her at first. I pleaded that it was not I who wanted to know about the ghost, but a curious public for whom I was acting as medium. The use of the word ‘medium’ helped me a little. Did I not say, also, that Tuesday is my lucky day?
“We lived there, and that’s all I can say,” she said at first. “Did you ever see anything whilst you lived there?” She did not answer my questions for some time, but at last volunteered, “What we saw was like a great cat. But,” she continued fearfully, “I tell you, sir, it is not earthly, it used to come and knock at the door after we were in bed.”
“Ay, and I have got up to it,”came from the fireside, where the husband was sitting comfortably smoking his pipe. “What did it appear to you like?” I asked, addressing myself to the old gentleman.
“Either like a great cat or a dog,” the lady put in, apparently not certain which it was. “Then you too saw it?” “Oh! yes,” she replied with a shudder, of course I did. One night when my husband was not there it came and knocked the door and I went out to it. It was standing in one of the trees across the railway line there. I said to it, ‘Oh! you are come then.’ But it did not move by that,” she added.
“That was a screech owl!” came from the fireside. “I tell you it was not a screech owl, not an owl,” the old lady said.
With that the old gentleman came up to the door and joined in the conversation. “Yes,” he said, “we lived there for six months. I took the house for six months and so of course had to bide there.”
“It used to come between 11 and 12 o’clock after we were in bed,” the lady joined in, “and I assure you, sir, it was not earthly. And then, they have put it in the paper. I think it was very unwise to put it in the paper. And it was not done well at all!” This time it was I who shuddered.
“And it was done so badly,” she continued relentlessly. “If it was done well -” she paused, but after a while continued. “Not whoever did it, of course, I do not know who did it, it was very unclever. Besides, I think it is most unwise, for it is a spirit – it is not of this world.”
“How would you suggest it should be put in the paper?” I asked, humbly – for I knew I could not, like this dear old soul, write from actual experience.
“Oh different from that,” she returned scornfully. And, having fired this shot at me, she came back to the story of the ghost and gave a practical illustration of how it used to come and knock the door. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
“You do not think it could have been anybody playing a practical joke?” I said, putting the same question that I put to my friend last week. If she had suddenly seen the ghost, the lady could not have looked more horrified. “Indeed!” she retorted. “Who, indeed, could be so grossly ignorant as to believe that? Do you think anybody would play a practicaal joke for three years?”
“But,” I ventured, “it has not been seen since they fired at it the other night.”
“That, sir, was not liked in Lufton,” she answered. “A gentleman in the village did not like that.”
“I confess it is a mysterious affair,” I said, “but I should like to see it myself.”
“Ah! you say that. I used to think I should have the courage to speak to it, and I always keep my Bible near.”
“But it never spoke, did it?”
“Oh! no, it never spoke, only stood up and stared.” I said I thought the old blunderbuss would be a good prevention against the ghost. At this, the old gentleman by the fireside laughed heartily. His wife, however, replied that these mysteries were not revealed to us, and she was beginning her story over again, but I had to be off.
Another visit to the house at Lufton has elicited that some years ago a conjurer stayed there and slept in the room whose door is so vigorously tapped by this mysterious something. It transpired that some while after leaving the house at Lufton, this conjurer fell down the stairs of the house in which he was then living and broke his neck.
The occupant and his wife were very courteous to me on my second visit this week. They assured me that they have seen nothing of the visitor for a fortnight – not, in fact, since the night it was fired at by the estate coachman. They told me they have no intention of leaving the house. The wife affirmed she should like to live and die there. They told me that they intend to nightly barricade the house with reaping hooks, scythes and so on; and, as spirits are said to be unable to cross “edged” tools; they hope in time to weary their unwelcome visitor.
I sincerely trust they will succeed.
Western Chronicle, 25th November 1904.
Bullet-proof ghost.
Spirit of a conjuror distresses a village dame.
The Somerset hamlet of Lufton, near Yeovil, is perturbed about a wild-eyed ghost that haunts a lonely dwelling, where two old people live in great fear and trembling. A gun has even been fired at the ghost, without in the least scaring it. The ghost came back the next night, grinning and ogling as merrily as before. An old lady who has seen it twice supplies a graphic account of the apparition. It had, she says, great red, watery eyes, and when she spoke, it only glared her out of countenance. She believes the ghost to be the spirit of a conjuror, who, while living there, fell downstairs and broke his neck. He used to sleep in the room where mysterious raps are now heard almost nightly.
Daily Mirror, 26th November 1904.
“Noisy” Ghost.
House barricaded against a roving spirit.
The hamlet of Lufton, near Yeovil, is one of the spots often chosen by Walter Raymond, the Somerset novelist, to supply local “colour” to his descriptions of West Country life. Manyof the inhabitants of the hamlet believe in spirits; and there is great excitement now over a mysterious “ghost” that visits one particular house, raps on the outer door, and, when the inhabitants have gone to rest, mounts the stairs and raps on the bedroom door. It tramps noisily round the house, shakes the windows, and glares at folk from a pair of great glittering eyes. It comes and gleams and goes mysteriously. The house stands in a lonely spot, by the side of thee railway to Taunton. For three years an old couple lived there. They became so weary of the interruption that they moved into a neighbouring village.
Their successor tried digging. He was convinced the rappings betokened the presence of hidden treasure. Finding none, he also left. At present the house is occupied by another rural couple, who have surrounded their garden with turned-up scythes, garden forks, reaping hooks, and other edged and pointed articles. They say that spirits will not cross sharp-edged tools. The agricultural labourer has also an old rifle and a large supply of ammunition that he keeps handy. Whether effectually barricaded out, or because the squire’s coachman fired at it one night recently, the “spirit” has not troubled anybody for a few days.
Central Somerset Gazette, 3rd December 1904.