The Case Of The Haunted Bingo Hall.
Dr George Owen, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and this year’s President of the Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research, brings to ghost-hunting the probing, analytical mind of the scientist. He has now completed a fascinating report on some of Britain’s ghosts and poltergeists for the Sunday Mirror. Victor Sims went with him on his on-the-spot investigations, and here he reports on another extract from Dr Owen’s astonishing casebook.
Rain or shine, some holidaymakers at seaside resorts last summer turned their backs to the beaches and headed for spots where they were sure of a good time… the bingo palaces. Hundreds who filed into the bingo hall in Addington-street, Margate, were unaware of what goes on there after the last number is called and the lights are dimmed. The hall was once the Theatre Royal, opened 180 years ago. Now, they say, Sarah Thorne, who managed the theatre for more than 25 years in its heyday, has come back to express her disgust at its modern use. For three nights her ghost is said to have walked and scared one man so badly that he called the police.
In the night there have been resounding crashes from the balcony. Foyer and stage doors have slammed – when they are known to have been locked. Door curtains bundled and secured have been unrolled, as though by a human hand. And the ghostly head of a [?]-haired woman moved slowly in the air across the stage and disappeared into the wings. The face was identifiable […?] from the theatre photo gallery, as that of Sarah Thorne. Sarah succeeded her father Richard as maager of the theatre in 1874. She acquired the reputation of a martinet during the next 25 years, when she developed one of the best dramatic schools in the country. Several people claim to have seen her apparition since the end of World War 1. Many have kept nightly vigils hoping to see it. Police combed the building after a scare this year, but they were unable to solve the riddle.
With Dr Owen I went to the bingo hall in Addington-street. During the day, with breezy organ music from the stage, one-armed bandits and cigarette machines clicking non-stop, and the cash register ringing merrily, anywhere less likely to be haunted is hard to imagine. But it was in the stillness of the night, behind locked doors, that Alfred Charles Tanner, 51-year-old painter, had a spine-chilling excursion into the unknown. To enable the bingo games to go on uninterrupted by day, Mr Tanner had agreed to work at night to repaint the inside of the hall. At about 11.30 p.m. on the first night he started painting the walls a rich reddish-brown. He worked until well after 3 a.m. Then, after doing all he could, he went to sleep on the floor. That night was uneventful.
As he was about to start on the second night, he heard a panting sound from the stage. He thought it might be a stray animal. Most of the lights were off, so he lit matches and went over to the stage. He saw nothing. He then switched on all the lights and started painting at the back of the pit. He dismissed other noises as the creaking of old timbers in the wind. Then he heard uncanny sounds, felt his hair rising and a strange, prickly sensation at the back of his neck.
Mr Tanner, veteran Eighth Army “desert rat,” does not scare easily. “I had experienced the feeling once before, on night patrol,” he told us. “I felt someone was watching me. A moment later, we were fired at.” The creaking he heard in the bingo hall was accompanied by something like footfalls. They were regular, as if someone, or something, had walked from just in front of the stage to where he was working – and was now standing behind him. He looked over his shoulder. He saw no one. He went to all the doors. They were still locked, as they had been when he started work. “Suddenly,” Mr Tanner recalls, “the door of the box office banged violently – but not because anyone was using it. It is inside the theatre.” He was right. No one can enter the box office from outside.
He resumed painting, hoping he had imagined it all, wen the footsteps started again. They walked up behind him, so he turned. Again, there was no one there. Then came a stamping heavy thump on the floor in front of the first row of seats. It was as though something heavy had fallen from the roof. Mr Tanner, understandably jumpy by this time, looked across. “I swear I saw dust rising,” he said, “just as if an object had hit the ca[?].” But nothing had fallen. Nothing, that is, which could be seen or touched.
Dr Owen, anxious to probe more deeply into the curious happenings, patiently questioned Mr Tanner about what happened next. On the third night he started work as usual about 11.30 p.m., and checked that all doors were locked. The auditorium lights were on. The stage was in darkness. Later, he glanced from his painting and nearly dropped his brush. Moving across the stage from left to right, and about five feet in the air, was a semi-transparent globular figure, about ten inches across. Its only discernable features were two points where eyes would be if it were a face, and it was surrounded with a kind of fuzzy halo, which descended at the sides about where the shoulders would have been – if it had possessed a body. Dumbfounded, Mr Tanner watched it for a few seconds – until it vanished abruptly. Then, [?] he turned and made for the exit.
He was not certain, but the shadowy spectre he saw seemed to resemble features of Sarah Thorne, the old manageress. Next, the curtains over one of the exits, which were bundled and gathered on the ledge over the lintel began to move. Slowly, they seemed to [?] themselves and fall in stages, as if being lowered by someone.
Next morning, Mr Tanner told Mr Harry [?]bs, the theatre [?]; “There’s something odd going on in there. I’m not working alone any more. If you want the job finished find someone to stay with me.” Mr Lawrence Rodgers voluteered to spend the fourth night with Mr Tanner.
In the night there were whispering noises from the stage. Mr Rodgers claimed it was only wind blowing through the building. But both he and Mr Tanner heard a loud bang from near the front row of the dress circle. Startled, they ran to the theatre entrance. Police were called. An exhaustive search of the ghostly building yielded no clue. Could there have been intruders who wanted to frighten the men into believing that the place was haunted? (Once someon had left hurriedly, scattering sixpences over the floor, after breaking open a machine.) Could it have been the state of mind of a man forced to spend the night in a creaking 180-year-old building? Could a high wind, blowing in from the sea, cause the creaking in the old theatre, giving the impression of poltergeist activity? Or was Sarah Thorne protesting that her old theatre had been converted into a bingo hall – modern place of entertainment? These were the riddles to which Dr Owen sought to provide answers. His findings are in the next column.
Dr Owen’s Conclusion.
The natural impulse on hearing Mr Tanner’s story is to put it down to imagination or projected feelings aroused by loneliness and incidental noises. This would be plausible as he himself compared his response to the creaking footsteps behind his back to his tenseness on night patrol in the war. Such emotions cast no reflection on his truthfulness, for his experiences in the hall would be “real” to him. Nor would it detract from his excellent wartime record. It would not reflect on his mental health, because courage consists not in failing to have fear, but in controlling and subordinating it. Many men of exemplary bravery on the battlefield have had post-war experiences of re-living situations they previously endured.
But the objection to this interpretation, however plausible, is that the “bang” on the last night was clearly objective and not hallucinatory, because Mr Tanner’s companion reacted to it and called the police. It would then be natural to suppose that the “haunting” was caused by practical jokers. But if this was so, how did they manage those two tricks – the ghostly head and the slow rolling down of the curtain?
If we ascribe the banging – but not the head and the curtain – to tricksters, we have to suppose: 1. They got in and out of the theatre without leaving any trace. 2. Mr Tanner was hallucinating. Taken together, this is rather piling up improbabilities. It is more reasonable, therefore, on the evidence collected, to accept that the experiences of the two men were, in fact, genuine. That is to say, there really is a ghost. The bingo hall is haunted. We cannot say much about the cause of the haunting. But it would appear to be connected with something that happened in the early days of the building.
I find this case fascinating because of the combination of a visual apparition (the ghostly face), the noises (bangs, footsteps, whisperings), and the movement of an object (the curtains) as happens in poltergeist cases.
Sunday Mirror, 27th November, 1966.