Traditions and mysteries of the north.
V. The haunted house at Willington.
In these papers we have dealt hitherto with matters which belonged to the natural, and which could be accounted for by perfectly natural means. This week we enter into the region of the spiritual, for the noises and sights which have been the cause of denominating the apparently harmless building on Tyneside “The Haunted House at Willington,” have not been traced to the agency of any known forces in either nature or art. Although we are scarcely justified in assuming from this that the agencies were supernatural, yet when it has been asserted by a trustworthy authority that thirty or forty witnesses could be produced who would testify to having seen and heard such sights and sounds as seem at least to belong to the region of spirits, a sort of colour is given to the assumption. It was about 1840 and the four or five succeeding years that the ghostly visitations attracted the greatest amount of public notice.
At that time the house was occupied by Mr Joseph Procter, whose relatives appear to have bought the building in 1806. The large mill adjoining was used at that time for grinding flour by Messrs. Unthank and Procter, but is presently occupied as a store for oilcake in connection with the extensive manufactory of that article carried on in the newer building across the road. The Procter family lived in the house till 1847, prior to which the “visitations” had become much less frequent. A rumour that the house was haunted gained some currency previous to the time of its purchase by Mr Procter’s relatives, although it is stated that nothing of the kind was noticed during the first twelve years of his residence there. At last, both the people outside and the family inside began to hear sounds often, and to see apparitions frequently, for which there was no visible cause. The house was built in 1800, and there are reports of some deed of darkness having been committed by some one engaged in the work. Mr Howitt also mentions that Mr Procter had discovered a book which made it appear that the same kind of thing went on in a house on the same spot 200 years before.
The situation of the house itself is picturesque, not to say strange. Standing between the Tynemouth branch of the North-Eastern Railway and the river Tyene, it occupies a position between two highways of commerce, which makes it anything but lonely, although thirty years ago one can conceive that Willington had been a much more secluded neighbourhood than it is now. Situated in a deep hollow, which is spanned by a railway bridge of lofty arches – a feature which is so characteristic of the North – the visitor sees the famous habitation long before he can approach its threshold or leisurely survey its proportions. A dirty stream runs round its base and joins the river, after passing the mill, through acres of mud when the tide is low. If one did not know that there was something “uncanny” about the building, there is little about its exterior to suggest unnatural fears. But, knowing its history, imagination may invest the windows of the upper storeys with a sepulchral look, and people the unoccupied rooms with all sorts of goblins. It should be stated that the ground floor of the house is now mainly occupied as a laboratory. The first floor is let out in tenements to two or three families, and the third floor – in one room of which the “disturbances” generally took place – is unfurnished and unoccupied, as likewise the attics above. The present tenants have seen or heard nothing unusual, and appear to wish to laugh at the whole thing.
People in the little village are divided in opinion about the matter. One says it’s all superstition, and asserts that “never nothink was seen.” Another is equally clear that “there’s sights been heard there that’s not very canny,” and this even since the railway, the enemy of ghosts, shrieked over the dell perpetually, and the clatter of Jarrow’s thousand hammers, morning, noon, and night, came floating on the air. at all events, it is clear that no authentic account of a recent apparition can be easily laid hands on, although still one might fill a volume with tales of horror which the credulous in such matters love so well to repeat to the interested or the timid. The stories now afloat are more of the nature of tales told to frighten children than the accounts of the doings of 1840 and succeeding years. There seems to have been at that time a peculiar furore as to haunted houses, for we find Windsor, Liverpool, Dublin, Carlisle, and Sunderland, coupled with the case at Willington. Every one knows how a mania in this kind of thing spreads, and whatever may have been the case in the past, all parties have to be congratulated that the annoyances appear to have ceased.
Efforts were made at different times to unravel the mystery of the noises and strange apparitions; but without success. Perhaps the best known endeavour in this way was that made by Mr E Drury in 1840, from its publication in “Richardson’s Table Book,” and elsewhere. Mr Drury had arranged to pass a night in the haunted room along with a companion, and the two arrived to execute their purpose on the 3rd of July. After the house had been locked up, every corner of it was minutely examined. The room out of which the apparition proceeded, as well as the adjoining rooms, was unfurnished, and the closet out of which it issued is too shallow to contain any person.
Mr Drury and his friend had two lights by them, and were satisfied that there was no one in the house besides Mr Procter, the servant, and themselves. Mr Drury had come prepared to test the genuineness of the sights and sounds, inclined to scoffing rather than belief in their reality. What followed will be best gathered from his own words in a letter addressed to Mr Procter: –
“Sunderland, July 13, 1840.
Dear Sir, – I hereby, according to promise in my last letter, forward you a true account of what I heard and saw at your house, in which I was led to pass the night, from various rumours circulated by most respectable parties, particularly from an account by my esteemed friend Mr Davison, whose name I mentioned to you in a former letter. Having received your sanction to visit your mysterious dwelling, I went on the third of July, accompanied by a friend of mine named T. Hudson. This was not according to promise, nor in accordance with my first intent, as I wrote you I would come alone, but I felt gratified at your kindness in not alluding to the liberty taken, as it ultimately proved for the best.
I must here mention that not expecting you at home, I had in my pocket a brace of pistols, determining in my mind to let one of them drop, as if by accident, before the miller, for fear he should presume to play tricks upon me – but after my interview with you I felt there was no occasion for weapons, and did not load them, after you had allowed us to inspect as minutely as we pleased every portion of the house. I sat down on the third story landing, fully expecting to account for any noises I might hear, in a philosophical manner – this was about eleven o’clock p.m. About ten minutes to twelve we both heard a noise, as if a number of people was pattering with their bare feet upon the floor; and yet so singular was the noise that I could not minutely determine from whence it proceeded. A few minutes afterwards we heard a noise, as if some one was knocking with his knuckles among our feet, this was immediately followed by a hollow cough from the very room from which the apparition proceeded. The only noise after this was as if a person was rustling against the wall in coming up stairs.
At a quarter to one, I told my friend that feeling a little cold, I would like to go to bed as we might hear the noise equally well there; he replied that he would not go to bed till daylight. I took up a note, which I had accidentally dropped, and began to read it; after which I took out my watch to ascertain the time, and found that it wanted ten minutes to one. In taking my eyes from the watch they became rivetted upon a closet door, which I distinctly saw open, and also saw the figure of a female, attired in greyish garments, with the head inclined downwards, and one hand pressed upon the chest as if in pain, and the other, viz., the right hand, extended towards the floor, with the index finger pointing downwards. It advanced with an apparently cautious step across the floor towards me; immediately as it approached my friend who was slumbering, its right hand was extended towards him; I then rushed at it, giving at the time, as Mr Procter states, a most awful yell, but instead of grasping it I fell upon my friend – and I recollected nothing distinctly for nearly three hours afterwards. I have since learnt that I was carried down stairs in an agony of fear and terror.”
The following more recent case of an apparition seen in the window of the same house from the outside, by four credible witnesses, who had the opportunity of scrutinising it for more than ten minutes, is given by Richardson, on most unquestionable authority. One of these witnesses is a young lady, a near connection of the family (who for obvious reasons did not sleep in th ehouse), another, a highly respectable man who has been for many years employed in, and is foreman of the manufactory, his daughter, aged about seventeen, and his wife, who first saw the object and called out the others to view it. The appearance presented was that of a bareheaded man, in a flowing robe like a surplice, which gliding backwards and forwards about three feet from the floor, or level with the bottom of the second story window, seeming to enter the wall on each side and thus present a side view in passing; it then stood still in the window, and a part of the body came through both the blind (which was close down), and the window, as its luminous body intercepted the view of the framework of the window; it was semi-transparent, and as bright as a star, diffusing a radiance all around. As it grew more dim it assumed a blue tinge, and gradually faded away from the head downwards. The foreman pressed twice close to the house under the window, and also went to inform the family, but found the house locked up. There was no moonlight, nor a ray of light anywhere about, and no person near. Had any magic lantern been used, it could not possibly have escaped detection, and it is obvious nothing of that kind could have been employed in the inside, as in that case the light could only have been thrown upon the blind, and not so as to intercept the view both of the blind and window from without. The owner of the house slept in that room, and must have entered it shortly after this figure had disappeared.
Mr William Howitt visited the house, and in his book entitled “Visits to Remarkable Places,” gives some further particulars than are contained above. In the course of his paper on the subject he says:-
“One of Mr Procter’s brothers, a gentleman in middle life, and of a peculiarly sensible, sedate, and candid disposition, a person apparently most unlikely to be imposed on by fictitious alarm or tricks, assured me that he had himself, on a visit there, been disturbed by the strangest noises. That he had resolved, before going, that if any such noises occurred he would speak, and demand of the invisible actor who he was, and w hy he came thither. But the occasion came, and he found himself unable to fulfil his intention. As he lay in bed one night he heard a heavy step ascend the stairs towards his room, and some one striking, as it were, with a thick stick on the banisters, as he went along. It came to his door and he essayed to call, but his voice died in his throat. He then sprang from his bed, and opening the door found no one there, but now heard the same heavy steps deliberately descending, though perfectly invisibly, the steps before his face, and accompanying the descent with the same loud blows on the banisters.
“My informant now proceeded to the room door of Mr Procter, who he found had also heard the sounds, and who now also arose, and with a light they made a speedy descent below, and a thorough search there, but without discovering anything that could adccount for the occurrence.
“The two young ladies who, on a visit there, had also been annoyed by this invisible agent, gave me this account of it. The first night, as they were sleeping in the same bed, they felt the bed lifted up beneath them. Of course they were much alarmed. They feared lest some one had concealed himself there for the purpose of robbery. They gave an alarm, search was made, but nothing was found. On another night their bed was violently shaken, and the curtains suddenly hoisted up all round to the very tester, as if pulled up by cords, and rapidly let down again, several times. Search again produced no evidence of the cause. The next they had the curtains totally removed from the bed, resolving to sleep without them, as they felt as though evil eyes were lurking behind them. The consequences of this, however, were still more striking and terrific.
“The following night, as they happened to awake, and the chamber was light enough -for it was summer – to see everything in it, they both saw a female figure of a misty substance, and blueish grey hue, come out of the wall at the bed’s head and through the head-board, in a horizontal position, and lean over them. They saw it most distinctly. They saw it as a female figure come out of, and again pass into, the wall. Their terror became intense, and one of the sisters from that night refused to sleep any more in the house, but took refuge in the house of the foreman during her stay; the other shifting her quarters to another part of the house. It was the young lady who slept at the foreman’s who saw, as above related, the singular apparition of the luminous figure at the window, along with the foreman and his wife.
“It would be too long to relate all the forms in which this nocturnal disturbance is said by the family to present itself. When a figure appears, it is sometimes that of a man, as already described, which is often very luminous, and passes through the walls as though they were nothing. This male figure is well known to the neighbours by the name of “Old Jeffery!” At other times it is the figure of a lady, also in grey costume, and as described by Mr Drury. She is sometimes seen wrapt in a sort of mantle, with her head depressed, adn her hands crossed on her lap. The most terrible fact is that she is without eyes.
“To hear such sober and superior people gravely relate to you such things gives you a very odd feeling. They say that the noise made is often like that of a pavior with his rammer thumping on the floor. At other times it is coming down the stairs, making a similar loud sound. At others it coughs, sighs, and groans like a person in distress; and, again, there is the sound of a number of little feet pattering on the floor of the upper chamber, where the apparition has more particularly exhibited itself, and which for that reason is solely used as a lumber room. Here these little footsteps may be often heard as if careering a child’s carriage about, which in bad weather is kept up there. Sometimes, again, it makes the most horrible laughs. Nor does it always confine itself to the night. On one occasion, a young lady, as she assured me herself, opened the door in answer to a knock, the housemaid being absent, and a lady in fawn-coloured silk entered, and proceeded upstairs. As the young lady, of course, supposed it a neighbour come to make a morning calal on Mrs Procter, she followed her up to the drawing-room, where, however, to her astonishment, she did not find her, nor was anything more seen of her.
“Such are a few of ‘the questionable shapes’ in which this troublesome guest comes. As may be expected, the terror of it is felt by the neighbouring cottagers, though it seems to confine its malicious disturbance almost solely to the occupants of this one house. There is a well, however, near to which no one ventures after it is dark, because it has been seen near it.”
Newcastle Chronicle, 23rd November 1872.