Ghost Stories for Christmas- The Last Bear in England

Merry Christmas! Due to my travels through the hustle and bustle of the season, I'm putting up the last post for 2019 early. Enjoy!

Trim up the tree with clanking chains and floating orbs, it’s Christmas! As in years past, Skullduggery in the Smoke follows the most Victorian of Christmas traditions: Ghost Stories. For the entire month, I’m searching through Peter Underwood’s Gazetteer of British, Scottish, and Irish Ghosts for hauntings fit for a gaming table to pull out adventure ideas, historical connections, and bizarre details. So bring a torch, Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

As Christmas nears, ghostly growls disturb the calm winter nights in the village of Fernhurst in West Sussex. Yearly, villagers witness the ghost of the last bear in England returning to the scene of its death in Verdly Castle. The castle’s location is now a thickly wooded hollow in Verdly Wood with brush growing over the few remaining piles of masonry, but once it was a magnificent hunting tower. On a Christmas day sometime in the early 1000s AD, a bear foraging for food through Verdly Wood stumbled into a pack of hunters from the castle. The hunters attacked. Wounded and worried, the bear turned tail. The bear sought any shelter it could and ran straight into Verdly Castle. In Verdly’s great hall, the hunters cornered their quarry and slew the last bear native to England. Now, the bear returns each year and the hunters’ cries of triumph remind the nation of its loss.

Adventure Ideas

Because of their hibernation cycle, bears serve as a symbol of death and rebirth. They spend the winter in the underworld and emerge brand new each spring. The killing of the last bear gives that creature enough magical significance to make this symbol the literal truth. It’s not a ghost, it’s the magically-powerful undead last bear brought back out of hibernation once a year to feed. 

The skeletal remains of the last bear may lie near the foundations of Verdly castle lost in the ground. The ancient Celts wore bear-shaped amulets and bear teeth for protection. As a symbol of death, extinction, and loss, any part of the legendary bear makes a potent necromantic or enchanted talisman.

Unverifiable rumors claim Verdly Castle was used as a madhouse served by a handful of nuns before falling to a crumbling ruin. The growls and howls might not belong to a bear but an unquiet spirit of unsound mind pretending to be a bear. Anyone trying to put the “ghost bear” spirit to rest just strengthens its delusion. Or the bear’s specter adopted such “wild men” as her cubs. Now another charitable home opens near Verdly Wood. Certain incurable inmates vanish from their cells, although visitors sometimes hear their voices from beneath the ground. Any wardens mistreating their poor charges soon suffer a savage death.

One of the possible (if not portable ) translations of the name Arthur is “bear man”, possibly descended from the Celtic bear goddess, Artio. King Arthur legendarily lies sleeping under the ground waiting for his return and certain druidic circles celebrate King Arthur at the midwinter solstice only a few days from Christmas. When the last bear died the last link to Camelot died with it, but Merlin sends its spirit back to earth on the year’s greatest day of charity and hope. Following the ghostly clues and markers could lead to the Once and Future King.

As terrifically bonkers as the idea of a ghost bear may be, in the more fantastic world of Victoriana the monstrous possibilities stagger the mind. When the last owlbear returns, claw and talon marks mark the trees and screeches fill the air. The pale specter of a unicorn stalks the moors enchanting innocents and impaling the guilty. Gazing into the eyes of a ghostly cockatrice petrifies the soul but leaves the numb empty husk of a body alive.

Ghost Stories for Christmas- The Strange Facts of Old Hall and St. Mary

Trim up the tree with clanking chains and floating orbs, it’s Christmas! As in years past, Skullduggery in the Smoke follows the most Victorian of Christmas traditions: Ghost Stories. For the entire month, I’m searching through Peter Underwood’s Gazetteer of British, Scottish, and Irish Ghosts for hauntings fit for a gaming table to pull out adventure ideas, historical connections, and bizarre details. So bring a torch, Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

The next ghost story of the season leans back into the distant Victorian past and the less distant history of the Battle of Britain, making a haunting fit for Victoriana and Their Finest Hour. In the 1840s, nuns of the Benedictine order fled anti-Catholic sentiment in Hampshire to settle in the village of East Bergholt. They rebuilt the empty, faded chapel into the Church of St. Mary and converted the adjacent manor house, “Old Hall”, into a nunnery.

The air of both St. Mary and Old Hall crowd with legend and spirits. St. Mary lacks a bell tower, possessing instead a medieval-styled bell cage on the church grounds with over 4-ton weight of bells facing upside-down towards the ceiling and rung by dangerously shoving their massive bulk by hand. According to village folklore, workers spent 6 years attempting to build a bell tower, but the devil visited the worksite every night and undid all their labor. In Old Hall, chambers suffer sudden plummets of temperature with no obvious cause and wispy floating figures cross the corridors. 

Shortly after England entered World War II, the Benedictine order evacuated their nuns from East Bergholt due to the village’s location on the now-threatened southern coast. For the same reason, the British Army requisitioned the former nunnery as a barracks for its men stationed in the quiet village. The soldiers in Old Hall soon grew used to their new home and its strange atmosphere. They learned to avoid the main entrance and instead travel around the back of the building to the back door to avoid seeing strange figures and feeling ghostly touches. Each night at 10:50 the door to the sergeant’s mess unlocked and opened about a foot and half as a strange cold seeped into the hall. Soldiers armed with clubs waited on both sides of the door to catch the suspected pranksters. With no culprit on hand night after night, the enlisted men pragmatically started a nightly card game outside the haunted doorway so they could sneak in for a snack after the ghost unlocked the mess. 

 One young private progressing towards sleep in his bunk saw his door suddenly burst open. A faint shadowy figure crossed towards him and laid cold dead hands on his face. At the frigid groping, the private overcame his fear and yelled for help. The specter disappeared as his compatriots entered and turned on the light. The young private’s dark hair had turned white with terror.

Adventure Ideas

St. Mary and Old Hall changed denominations a few times in its history. Both Protestant and Catholic dead decay in their architecture and grounds. Arguments in life lead to disquiet in death. Do the strange unconnected hauntings reflect a ghostly battle of deeply entrenched beliefs? How can a ghost be swayed about the metaphysical facts of eternal life?

A bunch of soldiers stationed in an ancient house with a strange history makes an ideal scenario for a haunting. The men are trained and well-armed but not prepared for the supernatural. As outsiders, they have only church records and legends told in the pub to hint at the cause of their haunting. Best of all, they can’t leave the house without risking a court-martial. 

An inconveniently locked door conveniently unlocked by a ghost could facilitate many schemes. Murderers, thieves, prisoners, and star-crossed lovers could get that much closer to their goal provided they are bold enough to use dead hands to do their dirty work.

In folklore, the glorious ringing of church bells control the weather, grow crops, and drive away devils. The cold metal of most bells has been ceremonially baptized before their installation. Perhaps, the normally sacred church bells of St. Mary sleep in a “cage” on the humble ground due to some stain of evil wrought within the bells. What tragedies occur when a bell gets loose or worse installed high above the ground in a bell tower?

Ghost Stories for Christmas- Lady Dudley’s Pond

Trim up the tree with clanking chains and floating orbs, it’s Christmas! As in years past,  Skullduggery in the Smoke follows the most Victorian of Christmas traditions: Ghost Stories. For the entire month, I’m searching through Peter Underwood’s Gazetteer of British, Scottish, and Irish Ghosts for hauntings fit for a gaming table to pull out adventure ideas, historical connections, and bizarre details. So bring a torch, Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

On September 8, 1560, the servants of Cumnor Hall discovered the body of Amy Robsart at the bottom of a flight of stairs, her neck broken and two deep wounds in her skull. People started theorizing about her death soon after her skin turned cold. Although the coroner pronounced the death an accident, certain suspicious facts and more suspicious rumors wiggled into public knowledge. 

On the day of her death, Amy sent all the servants out of the house. Did she empty Cumnor Hall so she could commit suicide to escape the pain of the cancer in her breast? The house, Cumnor Place, belonged to one of her husband’s servants, Anthony Forster. He was present that day and suspiciously wealthy after her death. Did Forster push Amy to her death so her husband, Robert Dudley, a court favorite of Queen Elizabeth, could marry his admiring monarch? It could also have been an accident caused and exacerbated by her illness. Had the drug Amy took to nullify the pain of her cancer caused her to lose her footing while her bones weakened by her illness shattered down the stairs?

No matter the truth, Amy Robsart’s specter remained in the house long after her death. After repeated manifestations of her ghost on the stairs of Cumnor Hall, a team of nine parsons from nearby Oxford came to lay the ghost to eternal rest. They could not banish her, but together they managed to confine her spirit to one of the fish ponds on the manor grounds. Since then, the pond never freezes even on the coldest of winter nights.

 After many untenanted years, Lord Abingdon, the current owner, demolished empty, crumbling Cumnor Hall in 1810. Laborers rebuilt several nearby churches with materials from the demolitions. The church at the clean and bright village of Wytham gained a window from the room in which Amy Robsart slept her last night. St. Michaels in the center of the village of Cumnor received a gilded stone statue of Queen Elizabeth and a sturdy rear wall. All that remains of Cumnor Hall by 1855, are piles of stone and a chimney on the south side of St. Michael’s churchyard.

Adventure Ideas

The best part of this legend is the ghost transplanted to a different location. While they can’t get rid of a ghost permanently, some clergy can shift the unwanted haunting to a tree, an unused room, or an unlucky cow. Perhaps for a contribution to the poor box, the specter could be persuaded to migrate to the house of a disliked neighbor. Of course, if someone frees the ghost, the descendants of the parsons/ghost-trappers fall prey to a very angry ghost.

If Queen Elizabeth played a part in her death, Amy Robsart’s ghost might be persuaded by certain interested parties to unleash her vengeance on a currently living female monarch. 

Murder victims come back as ghosts, suicide victims come back as ghosts, and accident victims come back as ghosts. Is this ghost vengeful, regretful, or unlucky? That ambiguity makes research before an exorcism very difficult. Conspiracy and opinions handed down for generations hamper local inquires. 

The haunted pond could turn Amy Robsart into a Jenny Greenteeth sort of nightmare hag, ascending from the muck smelling of fish to pull down children unwary enough to fish in her pond.

The church of St. Michaels not only has bits of Cumnor Hall stitched into its architecture but the house’s inhabitants as well. The tomb of Anthony Forster, the man rumored to have killed Amy, sits in a place of veneration next to its altar. Perhaps two ghosts stalk through the church: one seeking to expose the truth and one to obfuscate it.

Perhaps the ghost in the pond is not Amy Robsart’s but her murderer. The ghost descendant’s hired the parsons to quarantine the specter to a quiet pond. If anyone recognized the shadowy figure at the top of the stairs, the scandal would ruin their family line.

Ghost Stories for Christmas- The Starving Children of Bramber Castle

Trim up the tree with clanking chains and floating orbs, it’s Christmas! As in years past, Skullduggery in the Smoke follows the most Victorian of Christmas traditions: Ghost Stories. For the entire month, I’m searching through Peter Underwood’s Gazetteer of British, Scottish, and Irish Ghosts for hauntings fit for a gaming table to pull out adventure ideas, historical connections, and bizarre details. So bring a torch, Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

In 1210, Bramber Castle in Sussex was the happy home of William de Braose, the 4rth Lord of Bramber. Through war, murder, and the patronage of King John, de Braose rose in power in the ranks of Norman nobles. After the de Braose’s capture of Arthur I (a threat to King John’s claim to the throne) and the subsequent suspicious disappearance of Arthur I, his fortunes should have risen even further. Unfortunately for him and his family, King John turned against de Braose, claiming his family owed taxes from the estates given him by the crown. The king took all their land, invaded their holdings in Wales, and captured de Braose’s four children. According to legend, King John had them starved to death.

The few remaining ruins of the Bramber castle sits on the western edge of the village of Bramber. Only the gatehouse tower and a few crumbled fragments of walls stick up out of the hill. The land now belongs to the Duke of Norfolk, but aside from stones for local civic improvements, the ruins provide little more than a pleasant place for picnics. In 1855, the village of Bramber numbers about 150 inhabitants. Most visitors come for an idyllic rest in the country. Tea rooms, tea gardens, and hotels stand next to mills and sheep pens.

At Christmas time, mysterious and emaciated children pleadingly hold out their hands and follow pedestrians through the streets of Bramber. They voicelessly cry for food, but if anyone tries to talk to them, the children vanish. Witnesses claim the apparitions beg around the ruins of the castle as well. Local rumor murmurs the children are the spirits of de Broase’s children, doomed by the death in their bellies to beg for eternity.

Adventure Ideas

Between 1844 and 1855, rail companies tried and failed three times to build a railway north of Bramber with a train station near the castle. While the marshy ground slowed the work, the creepy silent children stalking the worksite didn’t help either.

Given Bramber’s reliance on tourism, local leaders might pay good money to prevent dirty, ghost children from bothering guests to the village.

A peculiar number of children and teenagers in Willaim de Braose’s life died tragic deaths. Aside from this own children, Arthur I vanished in de Braose’s care at age 16. While committing atrocities against the Welsh, de Braose personally tracked down and killed the 7-year-old son of an enemy leader, earning de Braose the nickname "Ogre of Abergavenny". Perhaps the ghostly begging children are the embodiment of de Braose’s crimes for the crown, a cosmic stain looking for charity and justice at Christmas. Does the Ogre still seek out children during the winter?

In reality, King John captured de Braose’s family, but only de Braose’s wife Maud, and eldest son, William, died while imprisoned at Windsor castle or Corfe castle. Their cause of death escaped record. The rest of the children were released in 1218 although other accounts claim two of de Braose’s sons died. There are similar inconsistencies with the number of ghostly children and their genders. Are the children even connected to de Braose? The Victorian age was no stranger to tragic deaths. Is someone covering up their crimes and blaming their ghosts on the story of de Braose?

Bramber is also home to William Potter’s whimsical and naively creepy taxidermy tableaus on display in his families’ pub, the White Lion. Each diorama incorporates scenes of everyday life reimagined with stuffed small animals such as hamsters, birds, rats, kittens, and squirrels. If Potter’s art is as popular with dead Norman children as it is with living Victorian children, all sorts of macabre poltergeist activity could occur. Spectral hunger may manifest as stuffed animal bites.