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.
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