The ghost that’s kicked the bucket.
Malcolm Scott explains the strange tales of Hannath Hall.
Embellished by the years, the legends that surround Hannath Hall, Tydd, are enough to make your hair stand on end. But, if you are cynical enough, you can demolish all the strange tales that surround this old Elizabethan hall, once known as Sparrows Hall.
Ten members of the London Imperial College H.G. Wells Society, who stayed two nights at the now unoccupied house, armed with modern recording equipment, came across nothing supernatural. There was only one unexplained noise – “like someone kicking a bucket.”
Basically, there are two original legends about the old hall. Both concern the Hannath family who occupied it over a hundred years ago. One of the Hannaths was so fond of his wife, he would not believe she had died. He had food brought to her for weeks. Then her body was bricked up in the house. From that day, the house has been the subject of supernatural happenings, it is said. The second concerns a brown mare called “Bess.” Again the story goes, a member of the Hannath family was so fond of the horse that when it was buried under a tree, hay was placed there regularly for it to eat. The food – not surprisingly you may think – disappeared. There is no historic proof of either of these two events and it could be that one – perhaps the story of the horse – gave rise, over the years, to the other more gruesome legend.
The hall was occupied for many, many years, by members of the Williams family. Some of them can remember sleepless nights spent under its roof. But at the time they were children. Some of them today put these fancies down to dreams and nightmares, for they experienced them at an impressionable age. One of the family who believes her experience to be too vivid to be a dream is Mrs Audrey Godman, of Hampstead, London. She claims that when she was about 14 she saw the “ghost of old Hannah galloping through my bedroom on a large white horse.”
There were five sisters and three brothers in the Williams family. Two of the brothers live nearby, and a sister, Miss L.M. Williams, of 89 Gaywood Road, King’s Lynn, owns the hall, with her brother, Mr Hugh Williams, of Tydd. The hall was bought by the family in 1895. It was not until comparatively recent years that the legends of the haunted hall became public knowledge.
In 1957, Labour M.P. for King’s Lynn, Mr Derek Page, went to live there. A certain amount of publicity followed. There were visits to the house by Cambridge psychic research enthusiasts who later compiled a lengthy report on their experiments and what they discovered. But (being cynical) they discovered little, save some tappings they declared were made by an “unknown intelligence.” Publicity embellished the tales, and other legends, hitherto untold, suddenly stole into the limelight… perhaps the result of someone’s overworked imagination.
Mr John Williams, who lived at the hall for many years, is one who goes along with the idea that the legends have probably been fostered and coloured by childhood dreams. He, as a child, experienced strange dreams, which to-day he dismisses as such. And any strange happenings were not – as is generally suggested – at the rear of the house, but in the front bedroom facing the road, he says. “I got so terrified,” he said, “I had nights and nights of disturbing experiences. Doors opening when they should have been shut and the bed lifting, and things like that. I would be eight or 12.”
Stories about the house were told him by his mother. The house is 450 to 500 years old, says Mr Williams, who today dismisses the “hauntings” as “rubbish.” His mother used to tell them that old Hannath had a horse he was very fond of and when it died had a kind of vault made for it and would not accept it to be dead. Workmen were said to have fed the supposedly dead horse regularly. the food always went. No doubt the workmen took the food home for their own animals, said Mr Williams. This story, so similar in outline, could have given rise to the story about the dead wife and led to the national newspaper appendage, “the most haunted house in England.”
Mr and Mrs Hugh Williams left the house in 1950 – but not because it was haunted. A member of the Williams family lived in th ehouse until about two years ago. It has been empty since September last year. Mrs Olive Williams says she and her husband, Hugh, do not believe the stories about the hall. As far as she is aware no adult has ever seriously said he or she has seen a ghost in the hall. “You can tell them there is nothing there and they still won’t believe it. They still want to go and find out for themselves,” she said. She personally had never experienced any strange happenings at the hall and neither had her husband. And yet two nieces, 12 or 13 at the time, claimed that when they slept there they saw hands dripping blood hanging over them.
There have been various tenants at the house in recent years. One once said that if psychic researchers visited the hall the ghosts would come from the walls and scratch any children there.
So there you have it. Do all the legends of Hannath Hall really spring from one incident where a dead horse was offered food which subsequently disappeared? Have tales told at mother’s knee brought about vivid dreams and nightmares which in turn have embellished and added to the legend? Or does the ghost of the Hannaths stalk the hall and sometimes ride through the bedrooms on a white charger? We are always open to persuasion.
Spalding Guardian, 21st April 1967.
The Fenland Poltergeist.
(Chapter 11 of ‘Frontiers of the unknown’ by Andrew MacKenzie, 1968).
Hannath Hall, which stands in an isolated spot near Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, is a large brick farmhouse which, during the tenancy of Mr Derek Page, now Labour MP for King’s Lynn, his wife and family was the scene of a number of strange happenings which have never been adequately explained.
Indications are that the kitchen and the southern end of the house were built about four hundred years ago and that perhaps two or three hundred years ago the house was completely rebuilt and enlarged by adding the north wing, thus transforming it from the size of a cottage to one more fitting to a landowner.
The ground floor of Hannath Hall contains three living-rooms, a kitchen and a disused washroom, and the first floor a gallery from which various rooms open out, five bedrooms, a study and a bathroom. Several legends are attached to the house. The principal one concerns Joseph Hannath, who owned Hannath Hall and adjacent farmlands just over a hundred years ago. He is said to have had two great loves in his life; his wife and his horse. When his wife died he left the body laid out in the bedroom at the northern end of the gallery on the first floor (christened the ‘haunted’ bedroom) for six weeks after her death, and had meals sent up to her by the servants. Since then it has been said that no one has been able to spend a restful night in the room.
When his horse died he is said to have buried it under a tree, where he could see the grave from his window. Each day an armful of hay was placed on the grave. However, it is not known what truth there is in these legends.
Mr Page, then technical representative of a large chemical company, his wife, Mrs Audrey Page, their two children, Keir, then aged three, and Eve-Anne, then aged five, with Mrs Page’s mother, Mrs Rose Halls, took up residence in Hannath Hall in August 1957. Mrs Page and Mrs Halls described to investigators of the SPR a number of curious occurrences in the house. These phenomena were mostly auditory and nocturnal. Mrs Page said that she had heard raps, thumps, groans, and sounds like footsteps. Mrs Halls said that she had several times heard regular tappings from the upstairs rooms while she herself had been in the living-room downstairs. Once she was awakened in her bedroom at the southern end of the gallery on the first floor by a ‘terrific crashing’ as if someone was breaking down a heavy door downstairs. Another time she was ‘terribly shaken’ by a severe jolt of the bed. In a statement dated 24 April 1959 Mrs Halls said that recently she had again heard a heavy thud during the night. Whenever any of these phenomena occurred the door of the ‘haunted’ room, at the other end of the gallery, had opened, she said.
Mr Page, who was usually at home only at week-ends, had never heard anything abnormal himself, but told the investigators that his mother had cut short a stay in the house because of the alarming dreams she had had.
These personal family experiences, apart from the one described by Mrs Halls in April 1959, occurred in the months August-November 1957. The family left Hannath Hall in January 1960.
The curious happenings at Hannath Hall came to light when a representative of the local newspaper, Mr A. Wilmot, became stranded there in bad weather. He published an account of them and contacted the SPR. As a result the Hall was visited twelve times between November 1957 and January 1960 by Mr A.D. Cornell, of Cambridge, now a member of the Council of the SPR, and Dr Alan Gauld, the present Editor of the Journal and Proceedings of the SPR. They were accompanied on five occasions by other members of the SPR and the Cambridge University Society for Research in Parapsychology.
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell witnessed ostensibly paranormal phenomena on their first two visits to Hannath Hall; the accounts that follow are based on notes taken on the spot by the investigators present, and on signed statements which they wrote shortly afterwards. The experiments described in the assessment of the phenomena were scattered among all twelve visits.
The first visit was paid on the night of 16-17 November 1957, the investigators consisting of Dr Gauld, Mr Cornell, Mr (now Professor) D.J. Murray (then secretary of the Cambridge University SRP) and Mr (now the Rev) J.M. Brotherton, a member of the same society. They were met at Wisbech by Mr Wilmot and two of his friends who guided them to th ehouse.
Mrs Halls admitted them. The children were asleep in their bedroom on the first floor. Mr and Mrs Page, who had been at the cinema when the investigators arrived at 10.30 p.m., returned shortly after 11 p.m. During the next hour the investigators examined carefully the interior and exterior of the house. Mrs Halls told them that earlier in the evening, about nine o’clock, she had heard a steady rapping coming from the ‘haunted’ bedroom (marked ‘A’ in the plan). She was in the living-room at the time. However, the investigators afterwards found that even quite loud raps made on the floor of the ‘haunted’ room were inaudible in the living-room.
Shortly before midnight a ouija-board seance was started in the living-room – not that any of those present had ‘spiritualistic’ leanings, but Mr Cornell and Dr Gauld had found from experience that this was a useful and unobtrusive way of gathering together all the occupants of a house and watching them. Dr Gauld meanwhile stationed himself in the gallery outside the door of the haunted bedroom (‘A’). At 12.08 a.m. he heard a sharp snap from inside the bedroom, the door of which was open. He set the noise down to thermal changes and did not investigate. At 12.10 he thought he heard quiet footsteps on the stairs. The steps ceased before they reached the gallery. He went to the head of the staircase and found there was no one on the stairs; he concluded he had probably misinterpreted some noises from below. At 12.30 he was driven downstairs by the cold; during his vigil the temperature in the gallery had dropped from sixty to fifty-two degrees.
While Dr Gauld was maintaining his vigil he went into the children’s room several times. Once he saw Eve-Anne toss in her sleep and hit the wooden head of her bed with her fists, producing a loud bang.
At 1.25 a.m., while the others continued the seance downstairs, Mr Cornell and Dr Gauld went into the ‘haunted’ room with a view to settling down there for the night. They had no particular reason at this time to suppose that phenomena would occur in the so-called haunted room. Most of the phenomena reported by the Pages had taken place at the other end of the house. The bedroom had no electricity and was at that time being used to store furniture. The investigators searched it by the light of their torches. In the southern half of the room there were several large packing cases, the contents of which they investigated, some piles of books, several chairs, a washstand and a large chest of drawers. The northern half was relatively clear; there were two mattresses lying end to end. Against the western wall there leaned a dismantled bed, and along the northern wall there stood a line of wooden chairs and a dressing table.
Mr and Mrs Page had suggested to the investigators that they should not use the bedroom because it was so cold and uncomfortable. The two mattresses had been laid out by a previous party of investigators, not connected with the SPR.
The two investigators settled down feet to feet, with one blanket over their legs. The thermometer had by now sunk to 49 degrees, at which it remained during the ensuing event. They extinguished their torches. The time now was about 1.40.
A few minutes later they heard gentle raps coming from the bedroom floor; their torches showed nothing but bare boards in the region concerned. The investigators asked for, and obtained, specific numbers of taps, and then suggested a code of one rap for ‘yes’, two raps for ‘no’. The raps became louder and moveed nearer to the wall of the room; this meant that they came from a position about three feet from the right shoulder of Mr Cornell, who occupied the western mattress. The rapper claimed to be a woman who had been murdered in the house in 1906 – a claim which the investigators have not been able to substantiate. After a while they heard a series of six or seven knocks, growing in loudness, from the position in which the rappings had begun; the last one was of such intensity that Dr Gauld flashed his torch in its direction. The knocks ceased instantly. Torchlight seemed to inhibit the phenomena. Dr Gauld tried to note the questions and answers in the dark but was not able to do so. The accounts of the rappings went on the observers’ notes, written a few minutes after they had ceased.
The investigators did not see anything that could account for the raps.
The ouija-board seance in the living-room continued until shortly before 1.45 a.m. The reporter and his two friends then left. Mr Murray and Mr Brotherton went upstairs at 1.45 a.m. and heard the rappings in the bedroom from the gallery. Mr Brotherton ran downstairs, leaving Mr Murray outside the door of the ‘haunted’ bedroom. He found the Page family sitting round the table in the living-room, and then rejoined Mr Murray, who informed him that the raps had continued throughout his brief absence. Both immediately went downstairs and searched the washroom immediately under the bedroom in which they had heard the raps.
These activities caused a certain amount of noise, so the two investigators decided to leave the ‘haunted’ room to ask the others to keep quieter. Dr Gauld went to the door and Mr Cornell followed him; as he was passing through the doorway there was a thud behind them. Mr Cornell saw by the light of his torch that a chair which had been stacked on the accumulated furniture was now lying on the mattresses about the point where their feet had previously been. This was at least five feet from its original position. Having drawn Dr Gauld’s attention to what had happened, Mr Cornell replaced the chair and again moved towards the door. He heard it fall a second time but now he considered the reason for this was simply because he had not replaced it firmly. The chair was restacked on the furniture and the two investigators went downstairs. The time was now 2 a.m.
Ten minutes later Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell returned to the ‘haunted’ bedroom. Mr Murray went with Mrs Page into the room underneath it, and Mr Brotherton and Mr Page stood in the gallery. This left Mrs Halls on her own in the living-room.
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell soon heard loud raps, but this time from a position on the other side of the mattresses and about three feet from them. Mr Murray and Mrs Page in the room below could also hear the raps, and noted down some of the sequences. The raps confirmed, though still in reply to leading questions, some of the information previously given. The investigators asked the month of the supposed communicator’s death and heard eleven raps. They then asked the day of the month; there commenced a series of raps which moved along the floor towards Mr Cornell’s head. The sixteenth rap seemed to him to come from the air behind his head. He switched on his torch and the raps ceased immediately. He put out his torch and asked the rapper to begin again after ten. The raps were much fainter, and continued up to eighteen. The investigators then made some not very successful attempts to ascertain the rapper’s age at death. The raps grew very faint and finally died away. About five minutes later Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell returned downstairs. It was then 2.45.
Meanwhile, about 2.15, the journalist and his two friends had returned to the house. Mr Page and Mr Brotherton let them in; they said that their car had broken down. Mr Page took them in his own car to Wisbech and did not return until 2.50.
At 3.34 Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell returned to the ‘haunted’ bedroom, accompanied by Mr Murray. As Mr Cornell, the last to enter the room, slammed the door they heard a sharp rattle. When they turned they saw that a brass toasting fork about eighteen inches long had been thrust behind the metal plate to which the door bolt was attached; one of its prongs was inserted through the iron loop into which the bolt should have run, thus ‘bolting’ the party into the room from the inside.
They removed the toasting fork and sat down on the mattresses. There were no further phenomena. They left the room about 4.10 and settled down to sleep. At daylight they searched the room again, but could find nothing to account for the phenomena they had witnessed.
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell paid a second visit to Hannath Hall on 21-22 November 1957, accompanied by three members of the Cambridge University SRP, Mr Murray, Mr A Hickling and Mr (now Professor) Ian Hacking. They arrived at 11.30 p.m. The reporter (Mr Wilmot) and his two friends were again present. They arrived about 11.45 p.m. and left at 1.30 a.m. Their movements were most carefully checked.
The house was carefully searched and the washroom sealed. At 12.10 Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell took up positions in the ‘haunted’ bedroom (A) and Mr Hacking stationed himself in the loft immediately above. about 1.30 the two investigators in the bedroom twice asked for three knocks and both times heard three faint and muffled knocks which seemed to come from the washroom below. At 1.27 Mr Murray, who was in the living-room, heard eight faint knocks from the direction of bedroom A. But none of the others in the living-room (Mr and Mrs Page, Mrs Halls, Mr Hickling, the reporter and his two friends) heard them.
At 2.20 a.m. Mr Hickling replaced Mr Hacking in the loft, and Mr Hacking and Mr Murray replaced Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell in Bedroom A. At 2.45 a.m. Mr Hacking and Mr Murray heard six muffled knocks. No other phenomena occurred, and the watch was terminated at 4.30 a.m. No other phenomena of a poltergeist type were experienced during the investigators’ later visits or during the remainder of the Pages’ tenancy of Hannath Hall.
On one occasion the investigators brought a non-professional medium to the house and held a seance in the ‘haunted’ bedroom. A woman calling herself Eliza Cullen or Culler came through and said she had made the raps. She said she had buried her baby in the garden near a big tree. However, no person of that name who might have lived at Hannath Hall could be traced.
Now we come to the strange incident of the fair-haired boy. During the late afternoon of 22 April 1959 Mrs Page was sitting at the table in the living-room. Something drew her attention to the door of the small boxroom, which she could see over her right shoulder. In the doorway she saw the figure of a small fair-haired boy aged six to eight. She thought this was odd, as the boy did not resemble her own son, who was not in or near the house. She looked away momentarily, and when she looked back she was surprised to find that the figure had completely disappeared. She looked in the boxroom, but it was empty.
One afternoon in early July of the same year, at about the same time, she saw the same figure in the same place. She was sitting in front of the fire in the living-room, and on this occasion saw the figure more clearly. The light was behind it, and she noticed that only its head and shoulders appeared round the door. It was not her son, and seemed to be dressed in a white smock. It said nothing and once again disappeared. There were no other witnesses to the appearances of the boy.
I telephoned Mrs Page on 5 January 1968 to ask if she could give me any more details about her experiences with this figure. It was, she said, quite solid. She was certain the figure was not that of any of the boys in the district as she knew them all by sight. The boy was wearing ‘a frilly thing’ round the neck of what could have been a white smock or nightgown. The door of the boxroom was half open both times and the boy was looking round the door in the same way – with only the head and shoulders showing – on the two occasions she saw the figure.
The boy had rather long hair turned up at the ends. There was no chance that the figure, if it had been that of a living person – which she was certain it was not – could have slipped away unnoticed as there was no other door leading from the boxroom. The figure showed awareness of her, she said. Mrs Page told me that she had never before or since seen an apparition.
The above narrative is taken from an article by Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell in the September 1960 Journal of the SPR and from the Spring 1964 issue of Light which contains a condensed account of a lecture given to the College of Psychic Science by Dr Gauld. I have also included some information taken from the investigator’s private notes.
Two visits were paid to Hannath Hall at Easter 1967 by members of the Ghost Study Group of the H.G. Wells Society of the Imperial College of Science and Technology. They had first heard of Hannath Hall through an article in the London Evening News. They then obtained the report of the SPR’s investigation and decided to conduct their own investigation in such a way as to eliminate or control as many variables as possible.
The Ghost Study Group’s investigation was planned on two assumptions: (a) that the region was infested with practical jokers and (b) that any of their own investigators were likely to produce phenomena to hoax the others.
Eleven investigators spent two nights at Hannath Hall. They were arranged in pairs so that they could check on each other to prevent practical joking. The odd man was the photographer who was allowed to sit with any of the pairs. Every two hours the positions of the observers were changed to ensure that no one had more than his fair share of the most uncomfortable positions and to allow as many as possible to observe any of the phenomena that might be extra-sensory. Two observers were outside the house to prevent anyone entering to disturb the investigation.
The entire house was searched and all unwanted areas sealed before the investigation began. Thus there was no one other than the observers inside the house at the start and no one could get in without the observers outside stopping him.
Elaborate photographic and recording equipment was installed. A thermograph-barograph-hygrograph was placed in the control room to record any violent changes in temperature.
It was agreed by the investigators that they should concentrate on bedroom A. A camera loaded with infra-red film was set up there during the night. Infra-red illumination was provided by two 500 watt theatre floodlamps blacked out with stage gelatines and covered with opaque cloth. electric bar fires similarly blacked out were also used. Although several interesting photographs were taken with this apparatus, it was discovered that the bar fires were not allowed sufficient time to warm up enough for correct exposures.
A move camera loaded with 8 mm colour film and three number one photofloods were also permanently set up. This was to ‘capture’ any poltergeist activity such as the throwing of chairs and toasting forks. A camera with electronic flash was also available.
The investigators considered that the precautions they took to make certain that those taking part did not fake any of the phenomena that might be observed, and the techniques they used to ensure that there would be accurate timing, a complete recording of all audio phenomena in the haunted region, with the possibility of fixing any sound in space and time accurately, the recording of temperature, pressure and humidity, and with infra-red, flash and cine photography to ‘capture’ any action occurring – would give them almost ‘laboratory style’ control over the house.
Druing the period of control the investigators observed no phenomena that could not have been explained. They did, however, note and eliminate the following effects:
1. A sound like a bell tolling, which was actually a loose pane of glass in a nearby farm building.
2. A clanking noise, due to a harvesting machine.
3. A banging noise, caused by a piece of corrugated iron.
4. Flashing lights in the windows, caused by the torches of those outside.
5. An optical illusion, noted by two of the observers, in which a door frame appeared to be shimmering. This is a common illusion caused by observing parallel lines under peculiar lighting.
During the second evening, before the period of rigorous control was started, two unusual things were noted:
1. A loud bang was heard in the control room via the bedroom A tape recorder. No one was in the bedroom at the time.
2. The clock in the wash-house was found stopped at 12 o’clock. It had previously been stopped by one of the investigators at 4.20.
The Ghost Study Group’s report points out that there were no inexplicable phenomena during periods of rigorous control. The two phenomena observed during the the second evening could easily be explained by a practical joker (perhaps one of the owner’s children) entering, altering the clock and accidentally banging the door on the way out. They, therefore, discounted these phenomena as not paranormal.
‘Why, then were we not haunted? There are, of course, many possible explanations. The two we consider most likely are: (a) the SPR investigators were tricked and the phenomena were all caused by a practical joker and (b) the phenomena are connected with the Page family (probably with the children)’. I will comment later on this conclusion.
The Ghost Study Group is to be commended for the thoroughness with which this investigation was carried out.
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell give their own assessment of the phenomena experienced on the first two visits of the SPR investigators. They say that although the phenomena which they experienced on the second visit were very slight, they cannot be entirely discounted. The controls on the second night were far stricter than on the first: the occupants o the house had been gathered into a single room and the washroom and adjacent doors carefully sealed. ‘Indeed, the precautions taken on our second investigation highlight some of the deficiences of the first.’
They add that, ‘When we began our first investigation we were far too sceptical, and we prepared no plan about what to do should phenomena occur. As a result D.J.M. and J. M. B. (Mr Murray and Mr Brotherton) did not check the times of events and the movements of persons as closely as required in such an investigation, and did not examine the exterior of the house at all; we did not bring a tape recorder, and failed to make one or two obvious tests on the paranormality of the raps, like requesting for example, raps on particular objects, or numbers of raps to match numbers of fingers held up in the darkness.’
They were puzzled by the incident of the toasting fork. The Page family said that they had never seen it before. Mr H. Williams, the owner of the house, said that it was his; a lot of the furniture stored in the ‘haunted’ bedroom belonged to the Williams family. The investigators said that to throw or even thrust it into the position in which it was found when the door was slammed on the night of the first visit was extremely difficult, but they discovered that if they placed it behidn the metal plate with its prongs just shaving the staple and slammed the door it would jump a little and bolt them in. Someone could have placed the fork in the necessary position while they were absent from the room between 2.45 and 3.34 a.m.
Now for the strange incident of the falling chair. ‘We are unable to explain the first of the chair movements; there were threads or other devices attached to the chair, and yet it travelled for several feet. When it moved the second time it merely tumbled over, and may have done so simply because A.D.C. (Mr Cornell) had not replaced it properly.
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell discuss in some detail the rappings they and some others heard. They consider that the rappings were ostensibly the work of an intelligence. In general they did not occur while they were asking questions; they came in an even tempo, at a rate of one a second or somewhat faster and were appropriate in number to the questions asked, for example, two for ‘no’ or eleven for ‘November’. The intelligence, however, wa crude, and a search of local church records, and inquiries at Somerset House, where details of births and deaths are stored, failed to confirm any of the information received.
Was there trickery? The two investigators ask, ‘Who could have tricked us? The journalist and his friends had an obvious motive, but for part of the time during which knocks were coming from bedroom A they were allegedly in Mr Page’s car. Mr Page has signed a statement to the effect that he did in fact drive them to Wisbech at the time concerned, and he, his wife and Mrs Halls have all signed statements that they were not in any way responsible for the phenomena. We are convinced that the two children were too young to have been responsible, and in any case we went into their room several tiems between 1.25 and 3.34 and found them sefly asleep.
Apart fromt he window there were only two possible exits from the children’s room. One was the door opening out on to the gallery. The other was a small opening (too small for an adult to pass through) cut by electricians into the loft. The opening was covered by hardboard which had been screen down so firmly that the screws could be turned.
Were the rappings the work of a practical joker? Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell make the assumption that inside or outside the house there lurked some practical joker whose presence they failed to detect.
In order to test this theory they measured the whole house carefully inside and outside, but could find no evidence of concealed priest-holes or other hiding places. They considered that the most likely hide-out and indeed almost the only possible one for a practical joker would have been the loft. on their first visit they could find no entrance to the loft. On their second visit tthey located a boarded-up trap-door opening from bedroom A itself. This was covered in spiders webs, and had obviously not been raised for a considerable time, but they assumed that the practical joker could have hidden in the loft.
‘Now the rappings were peculiarly sharp and percussive, and despite very extensive experiments on the acoustics of the house we were able to replicate them only from within bedroom A itself. Wherever the practical joker hid, he would still have needed to have set knocking devices under the floor of bedroom A. Accordingly, we stripped bedroom A of all furniture and examined with the aid of a magnifying glass every inch of the tongued-and-grooved floorboards and their junction with the walls of the room. We could discover no toolmarks whatever, and we are convinced that the floorboards had never been taken up.’
The two investigators removed the board that ran through two positions where knocking sounds had been heard and could find nothing suspicious either under it or under the neighbouring boards. They then in the same way eamined the washroom ceiling, which was likewise made of boards, tongued and grooved together, and reached a similar conclusion.
‘Our examination of the structure of the floor convinced us that knocking devices could have been laid under it only by removing knocking devices could have been laid under it only by removing boards from the floor of bedroom A or from the ceiling of the washroom; and that no boards had been removed from either of these places.’
Finally, it seemed faintly possible that the knockings had been made on the outside of the walls, windows or window-sills of bedroom A and that Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell had misheard them. They found that in the still hours of the night conversation in bedroom A was audible from outside the house, and, of course, the flashing of torches could be seen. They therefore conducted some experiments to determine whether observers in bedroom A were liable eto confuse knockings made on its walls and windows from the outside of the house with knockings made inside the room itself.
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell took turns in sitting in the same position as on the first night, but with eyes covered, while the other made rapping noises inside the room and another investigator made them from outside the house on various places on the walls, windows and window-sills of the room. Neither of the two investigators in the room made any major errors of localization. They concluded that the rappings were not made on the outside of the house; and this conclusion was reinforced by the fact that Mr Murray stated in his report of the first night’s phenomena that both he and Mrs Page were agreed that the raps which they had heard came from the ceiling of the washroom and not from the walls of the house.
‘We therefore do not think that a practical joke could have been responsible for the phenomena,’ Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell state.
Could the phenomena have been totally or partially caused by house movements due to subterranean forces? Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell consider at some length in their paper in the Journal what has been called the ‘geophysical theory’. They point out that Hannath Hall is situated in the Fens, and the large number of drains and water courses in that district makes the movement of underground water seem the most likely subterranean force to be at work, but they discuss first two other possibilities: earth tremors and subsidence.
There are no geological faults in the area, and it is not an epicentre for earthquakes and tremors .The two investigators were assured by the Cambridge University Department of Geophysics and Seismology that no seismic disturbances of a magnitude sufficient to produce house movements or jolts occurred in the neighbourhood at the times of the first two investigations. There had, in any case, only been two earthquakes of any magnitude which had affected this area, in the previous three years, according to their information at the time of writing (1960) – the Midlands earthquake of 11 February 1957 and the East Anglian earthquake of 9 February 1958. The area of greatest disturbance was at King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
That subsidence of the house has at some time taken place is shown by cracks in the exterior brickwork. Down the outside of the south wall there run a number of vertical cracks, which were filled with cement, probably ten to fifteen years ago, and have not opened further since then. In the north wall of the house there are two large cracks, the larger running from the eaves to within four feet of the ground. Both cracks extend right through the wall and can be traced in the plaster inside bedroom A and the washroom below. Down the west wall of the bedroom two vertical cracks run from just below the front window of bedroom A and the washroom window immediately below it. The east wall of the bedroom has two long cracks, which were obviously filled with cement at the same time as those on the south side of the house.
‘It seems obvious,’ the investigators state, ‘that the most recent subsidence occurred at the northern end of the house, and could well have caused various bangs and creaks, which occupants of the house might have thought paranormal. However, the weathering of these cracks in the brickwork suggests that they are five to ten years old, and we are reasonably satisfied that the house is not at present subject to movement of the foundations. On 15 June 1959 A.D.C. (Mr Cornell) cemented glass tell-tale slides across both the cracks in the north wall of the house, and wedged glass phials into the widest parts of the longer vertical crack. He also cemented two glass tell-tales across the cracks in the plaster inside bedroom A. All the phials and slides are still intact, and we conclude that the cracks have not opened or closed during the period of observation (June 1959 – January 1960). In this time there have been both a drought and fairly heavy rains, and one would expect some indication of subsidence if this is in fact liable to occur.’
Hannath Hall is in a district which abounds in water courses and phenomena occurring there would seem particularly susceptible to the underground water explanation, Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell point out. Furthermore, there is a legend that a smugglers’ tunnel runs to the house, whence is uncertain, although three points, all about a mile away, have been suggested .They had not been able to find any evidence to confirm the existence of a tunnel, but if one did exist it might serve as a channel up which wate rwould move at pressure under suitable conditions – for instance after a heavy rainfall or a tide in a nearby river.
Now, since rainfall occurs twice a week in most districts, and tides twice a day in all tidal districts, underground water could not be regarded as a plausible explanation of non-recurrent poltergeist phenomena – unless the phenomena in question occurred immediately following an exceptionally heavy rainfall, or an exceptionally high tide, the two investigators maintain. Their enquiries showed that at the time of the occurrences described above tides and rainfall in the vicinity of Hannath Hall were quite normal.
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell were told by the Chief Engineers of the Nene River Board and of the North Level Commissioners that the months of October and November 1957 were not excessively wet; the average daily rainfall was 0.06 inches, and prior to their firs tand second visits (16-17 and 21-22 November) no rain fell for four and three days respectively. There is no high ground (above 150 feet) within thirty miles of Hannath Hall and therefore no head of water can build up to augment the water table and cause subterranean disturbances. In any case, the area is particularly well drained; there are one minor and two major water courses in the immediate vicinity.
To the north at a distance of one and three-quarter miles the South Holland Main Drain (SHMD) flows from west to east, emptying into the river Nene, which runs north to south two miles to the east of Hannath Hall. Two hundred yards to the south the North Level Main Drain (NLMD) flows eastwards, south of the village of Tydd Gote and into the Nene. In between these two main drains the old Shire Drain and angle cut flow south eastwards, emptying into the NLMD between Hannath Hall and the Tydd Gote pumpings station. Hannath Hall is therefore bounded on the north, south and east sides by major water courses, and in addition the old Shire Drain cuts through the area six hundred yards to the north-east.
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell say that the activities of the pumping station at Tydd Gote, which only works in the daytime, strongly suggest that subterranean water could not have caused the phenomena at Hannath Hall. The water level and pumping figures of this station for the periods prior to and during their first two visits were quite normal. They substantiate the rainfall figures for the period, and show that there could not have been an excessive accumulation of subterranean water in the area of Hannath Hall through seepage southwards from the SHMD and the Old Shire Drain.
It has been suggested to us by Mr G.W. Lambert (to whom we are indebted for several interesting suggestions) that tidal pressure in the river Nene might cause a build-up of water in both the SHMD and the NLMD, and hence, derivately, in the region of Hannath Hall; or , more generally, that a sympathetic change in the water table might occur in the area at the times of, or following, tides in the river Nene. We have examined this suggestion carefully, but can find no evidence to support it. Tides in the Nene on the occasions of our first visits were of normal height. Tides in the Nene have little effect on the rate of flow of water through the sluice of the SHMD. The same applies to the NLMD sluice, which is situated on the Nene side of the Tydd Gote pumping station. Any effect of tidal pressure at the two sluices is in any case compensated for by the activities of the pumping station which maintains a constant water level in the NLMD.
The engineers of the Nene River Board have commented upon the suggestion that the water table in the district varies sympathetically with the tides; they believe that even in the alluvial soils of the district no such effect could be expected more than half a mile from the banks of the river Nene. Tests with bore holes between sixty and two hundred feet from the river, conducted in 1937 and 1953, show a sympathetic ground tide following high and low tides in the Nene with a time lag of roughly one hour. We have examined drawings of the sites of the borings. The extent of tidal variations of wate rlevel in the borings falls off with distance from the river Nene according to the exponential law. The figures suggest that the maximum sympathetic tide which could be expected half a mile from the river would not be more than 0.003 inches. It seems therefore most unreasonable to expect any similar phenomena in the immediate vicinity of Hannath Hall, which lies two miles to the west of the river and on the far side of the old sea bank defence which runs north and south parallel to the river Nene.
We can therefore with all reasonable certainty conclude that this is one poltergeist case which cannot be explained by the geophysical theory.
The time has now come, in the light of the evidence presented above, to try and make up our minds about the case of the Fenland Poltergeist. One remarkable, indeed almost unique feature of it, was that some of the phenomena were observed by two trained investigators of the SPR. As Mr W.H. Salter points out in his book Zoar (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1961), when commenting on poltergeist cases, ‘It is extremely rare for a critical observer, who knows what trickery can effect, to be present when the phenomena are occuring.’
Let us consider first of all the question of the raps. The then editor of the Journal, Mr G.W. Fisk, raised a number of points with the two investigators after they had submitted their paper and it was agreed that ‘the crux of the case is the evidence for and “intelligence” exhibited by the raps’.
The raps were heard simultaneously by both Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell in bedroom A, and by Mr Murray and Mrs Page in the washroom. All four witnesses agreed that the knocks were responses to questions. The longer series came in a steady and quite rapid rhythm and when an answer was completed there was silence until after the next question had been posed. Inspection of the records show that there were at least fifteen series of more than two raps.
We should now bear in mind another poltergeist case in which an investigator conversed with a ‘ghost’ by means of raps. It concerns a house, inhabited by a small farmer and his five children in Derrygonnelly, County Fermanagh, in Ireland, where disturbances were reported in 1877. The investigator then was Sir William Barrett. Mr G.W. Lambert, in the Journal for June 1955, points out that in the vicinity of the disturbed house limestone changes to sandstone and this is ideal terrain for a subterranean stream, subject to sudden spates:
“Barrett, then a young man in the thirties, five years before the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research, was not in possession of all the information we have today about the pitfalls that beset this kind of investigation. He persuaded himself that he had conversed with the ‘ghost’ by means of a code of knocks, testing it not only for intelligence, but also for ESP, as we should now call it. With knocks of varying strength, coming at irregular intervals, caused probably by dripping wate rin a cavern below, it is dangerously easy to ‘stop counting’ when the ‘right’ number of knocks has been given. The owner of the house, so far from corroborating Barrett’s impression, said he too had tried to get answers to questions by raps, and found ‘… it tells lies as often as truth, and oftener, I think.’ Barrett was the heir to a very long tradition, going back to the early middle ages, that it was possible to ‘converse’ with ‘it’ in poltergeist cases. The stories of such conversations are so obviously the outcome of ‘secondary elaboration’, sometimes invented for the purpose of edification, that one need not regard them as damaging to the working hypothesis (of physical causes) we have been considering.”
Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell have argued at some length, as we have seen, that the geophysical theory cannot account fo rthe phenomena that took place on their first two visits to Hannath Hall. My own view is that if the sounds were of physical origin and not caused by a trickster they could be expected to continue whether light was showing or not, but they stopped the moment a torch was shone. Light seems to inhibit the production of certain seeming paranormal phenomena.
We should bear in mind the views of Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell that the ‘intelligence’ responsible (in their opinion) for the rappings at Hannath Hall was crude ‘and a search of local church records failed to confirm any of the information received.’ This experience of an ‘intelligence’ which fails to produce any information which can be checked is far from being unusual. In such circumstances it is easy to come to the conclusion that no ‘intelligence’ is behind the manifestations. However, in Zoar, Mr Salter, an investigator of great experience, points out that:
“It is not, however, necessary to have recourse to mediums in order to observe the emergence of an interpersonal intelligence, on a small scale indeed and in conditions that do not favour definite proof. The old-fashioned practice of table-tilting has fallen into disuse, regrettably I think. I have on various occasions joined with friends in this practice, and have read reports of table-tilting, planchette or other forms of automatism as conducted by other groups. The experience gained in this way has left on me the clear impression, in a matter where proof is not to be expected, that during the process of automatism and through it an ad hoc intelligence emerges which is not the intelligence of any single member of the group.”
Mr Salter makes it clear that he uses the word ‘intelligence’ non-committally. “Whatever it is that emerges is too rudimentary and transient to be called a personality.”
We must examine the role the investigators could have played in the happenings at Hannath Hall. As Mr Fisk points out, ‘There is the inevitable question of the good faith of the investigators.’ He indicated that Mr Cornell always seemed to have been in a position to produce the phenomena himself, and the same was true, to a lesser extent, as regards Dr Gauld for, at least, some of them. In reply, Dr Gauld said that as for the possibility that either Mr Cornell alone or he alone faked the phenomena, this would have been possible but exceptionally difficult.
As regards Mr Cornell, when about 2.40 a.m. during the first visit the knocks were getting very faint, they took hands and touched feet at his (Gauld’s) suggestion and there was one more faint knock after this. One position in which knocks were heard was well out of Mr Cornell’s reach and the manipulation of, say, a flexible rod in that room, which was full of heaped up furniture, boxes and junk would have been ‘extraordinarily difficult’.
Both the investigators had their torches in their hands or within easy access the whole time and were switching them on and off without warning. A good deal of the time their legs were under the same blanket on the mattresses. Dr Gauld said he sensed no movements on Mr Cornell’s part nor could he hear his clothes moving, but he could hear the sleeve of his duffel coat when he moved an arm.
Mr Cornell’s comment is that originally each investigator suspected the other of producing the sounds. He could have produced them from one position but not from another. Neither could have made the solitary tap which they heard after they had joined hands. ‘Fraud on the part of A.G. or myself might have been possible but would have been extremely difficult. Throughout the phenomena we both made a point of checking each other’s movements and drawing attention to any noises which we ourselves accidentally produced.’
These explanations seem to me to be perfectly satisfactory.
As regards the phenomena in general, particularly those reported by Mrs Rose Halls, there are still some possibilities to be explored. Mrs Halls said that the door of the ‘haunted’ bedroom opened whenever any of the phenomena experienced by her had occurred. No other person in the house has reported this. When I asked Mrs Page if she had found that the door of the ‘haunted’ bedroom was open after bangings had been heard sh ereplied that she had not noticed this. The family kept the door closed, she said, because the bedroom was used for storage purposes and was dusty. The door was heavy and would not open easily. However, if Mrs Halls was accurate in her observations, and the door of the ‘haunted’ bedroom did open when she experienced the phenomena, this suggests that the timbers of the house were being subjected to physical movement at the time, but not in such a way as to cause fresh cracks in the brickwork.
There are large trees growing very close to the house at the northern and southern ends. More than one haunting has turned out to be due to a tree too close to a house pulling on root growing under the walls and causing mysterious disturbances inside the house, particularly at times of high winds. This possibility is not said to have been considered by any of those who have visited the place. It would not apply to the movements in the ‘haunted’ bedroom unless there is some vertical timberwork to transmit movement up from ground level to the floor above. The dates on which Mrs Halls heard her noises were not recorded, but there is a big tree at the southern end uncomfortably close to the house, and it is possible that the tree is more unsteady when exposed to a south-west wind. Only repeated observations would show what cconnection there is between strength and direction of wind and noises heard in the southern end.
Mrs Page’s experience of seeing a small fair-haired boy in the doorway of the boxroom is most interesting. After noises are reported in a house it is not uncommon for an apparition to be seen. In such cases the apparition may well be a secondary effect induced by the noises.
We remember here that Mr and Mrs Page informed the two investigators that after the night of their first visit the strange noises which had occurred so often during the first few months of their tenancy almost entirely ceased. Mrs Page saw the apparition of the boy for the first time seventeen months after the investigators’ first visit. This experience, therefore, cannot be classed as a secondary effect.
There is a certain resemblance between Mrs Page’s experience and one reported in Tyrell’s book Apparitions. This concerned a woman who lived with her husband and stepdaughter and two small children, with servants, in a detached house which was not more than twenty years old. The family had been there about three weeks when, about eleven o’clock one morning, as she was playing the piano in the drawing-room, the woman was suddenly aware of a figure peeping round the folding doors to her left. Thinking it must be a visitor, she jumped up and went into the passage, but no one was there, and the hall door, which was half glass, was shut. She only saw the upper half of the figure, which was that of a tall man with a very pale face and dark hair and moustache. In the following August she was playing cricket in the garden with her little boys. From her position at the wickets she could see right into the house through an open door, down a passage and through the hall as far as the front door. The kitchen door opened into the passage. She distinctly saw the same face peeping at her out of the kitchen door. She again only saw the upper half of the figure. It may be noted that when the figure of the boy appeared to Mrs Page she saw only the head and shoulders.
The investigators from the Ghost Study Group of the Imperial College of Science and Technology suggested in their report that the SPR investigators might have been tricked and the phenomena were all caused by a practical joker, or, alternatively, that the phenomena were connected with the Page family, probably with the children. Dr Gauld and Mr Cornell considered both these possibilities and, on the evidence, dismissed them as an adequate explanation for what they had experienced.
The Ghost Study Group, after a most thorough investigation, asked, ‘Why, then, were we not haunted?’ The answer, quite simply, is that phenomena in a haunting or in a poltergeist case are so intermittent that it is only by the greatest good luck that they are ever experienced by competent investigators. It should not be deduced from this, however, that such phenomena do not occur. Much of the art of the investigator lies in the skill with which he conducts his interrogation of the witnesses and the comparison he makes of their experiences with that in other cases.
The case of the Fenland Poltergeist is a most interesting and puzzling one. It is to be hoped that groups of competent investigators, with the necessary equipment, will, with the owner’s permission, be given the opportunity to visit Hannath Hall from time to time to see if there is a recurrence of the phenomena experienced during the tenancy of Mr and Mrs Page.
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The Council have applied for a preservation order to be made on Hannath Hall at Tydd Gote, which is falling into disrepair. The seventeenth century building has been described as one of the most haunted houses in East Anglia and has been investigated by psychic research societies.
Fenland Citizen, 13th July 1977.