Ghost Stories for Christmas- The “Ghost” Ghost of Hinxworth Place

It’s Christmas time and once again the legends and folklore of the British Isles provide lumps of coal aplenty for all your players. We are again (we’ve done it twice so it’s a tradition now) looking at British ghost stories and picking out bits to adapt for Victoriana adventures. As before, all our tales come from the fabulous “Gazetteer of British, Scottish, & Irish Ghosts” by Peter Underwood, a terrific guide full of horrific hauntings.  So bring a torch Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

 In the countryside north of London sits the small village of Hinxworth which contains Hinxworth Place, a manor house built in the late 1300s for the Sheriff of Bedfordshire. Hinxworth Place looks like a pleasant medieval home with its egg white clunch-stone walls, and its many windows lighting the interior, but the marks of a tragedy from the past still show during tempestuous weather.

When the night wind howls, a procession of disturbing sounds echo through the chambers of Hinxworth Place, first screams from the upper floor, then the sound of something thudding down the stairs, followed by the cries of a baby, and lastly the gurgle of a gushing flow from a water pump outside. Although no records give it credence, rumor insists these phantom noises come from the recent past when the house’s family hired a young nurse to watch over their new baby. After the parent’s left for a night out, their young mischievous son decided to scare the nurse by pulling a white sheet over his body and startling her from behind on the upper floor. His plan worked too well. The terrified nurse grabbed a fire poker and attacked the boy. In the flurry of her vicious blows, the boy fell down the stairs. The sound of the struggle and the body thumping down the stairs woke the baby, causing it to cry. Servants heard the ruckus and tried to revive the boy by holding his head under a stream of cold water from the house’s water pump, but the boy died from his injuries.

Adventure Ideas

The idea of a person pretending to be a ghost to scare someone, and then becoming a ghost because of their target’s fright is the main reason I wanted to write about this one. This haunting’s tragedy could easily become charming, comedic, or terrifying depending on how you want to use it in an adventure. 

A pitiful child’s ghost covered in a home-made ghost costume is the stuff of nightmares, but turn it into an adult ghost intent on scaring people and this could be a delightful “Canterville Ghost” style romp. It could be really fun to have a real ghost continue to fake a haunting by rattling chains, wearing a sheet, stomping up and down stairs, and moving objects with string. All its manifestations are explainable, including its appearance, but look under the sheet and the terror begins.

                                                                           

In its past, Hinxworth Place housed a group of Cistercian monks, whose ghosts still lurk around the manor. Strangely enough, monks of the Cistercian order wear white robes. It’s probably coincidental that two different sets of specters covered in white flowing garments haunt Hinxworth Place.

I couldn’t find any dates or names for this haunting’s story, so this can fit anywhere you want. If it’s recent enough, the nurse could still be out there haunted by her mistake or worse continuing to murder children. Maybe the ghost seeks justice, and is trying to point out what really happened. If you close the case, you could end up with a spectral street urchin sidekick.

If the boy’s ghost seeks vengeance, any nursemaid working in Hinxworth Place is in danger. He might just be incredibly protective of any children in their care, or he might try to kill the nursemaid before she has a chance to hurt the children.

Old burial practices are one reason we have the sheet-wearing ghost cliché. Coffins are expensive so most people buried their loved ones in burial shrouds, a massive sheet most often made of white wool wrapped around the deceased’s entire body. Burial shrouds were still popular with the lower classes in the 1800s. Pranksters wishing to scare children draped white fabric over their bodies to appear as bodies newly crawled out from their graves.  Numerous legal documents from the 1700s and 1800s cite fines and punishments for persons caught impersonating ghosts. We’ll get back to that in a future blog post.