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Weirdest Ghost

lordmongrove

Justified & Ancient
Joined
May 30, 2009
Messages
4,890
What is the strangest ghost you have heard of?

They Walk in The Night True South African Ghost Stories and Tales of the Supernormal by Eric Rosenthal was published by George Allen & Unwin in 1949. In includes a truly weird apparition.This is the quote verbatim on pages 124-125
"Here is a tale set down by Mr C.H Basson, an eyewitness of what went on in the home of Mr J. van Jaarsveld of Haartebeest River in the district of Uniondale shortly after the Jameson Raid.
It appeared in the daily paper “Dagblad”, of Cape Town, as follows:
“In consequence of what he heard, he went to the farm of a Mr van Jaasveld. Shortly after sunset, the spook commenced his pranks and certain noises were heard coming out of a chest. The spook seemed especially attracted to Mr van Jaasveld and his niece , Miss Mayer . Whenever the latter dared to take a seat on the chest, she was moved about and the chest moved also.
“But the most weird thing of all”proceeded Mr Basson' “happened at night time. Miss Meyer went to lie down. We blew out the candle, but no sooner had this been done than she called out to us to light it again. We did so and lo! The spook had, during the few seconds that the candle was extinguished, tied her hair firmly to the bedpost. We untied it and plaited her hair into one tress, tied it at the end with a firm knot and made her lie down again. We then ranger ourselves round her bed, each with a box of matches in his hand. The candle was blown out again. Immediately afterwards, she cried out that the ghost was tugging at her hair. We all struck a match and found that one strand of the plait had been twisted out and tied as firmly as ever to her bedpost. Three of those present were able to see the spook. They say it resembled a phosphorescent crab with two huge pincers. They saw it 'floating' about the room touching here and there. On a former occasion it assumed the form of a skeleton hand with two fingers.”
 
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According to Jennifer Westwood in her 1985 book Albion, a Guide to Legendary Britain ,a lane in Crowborough, East Sussex, called Jarvis Brook Road, is haunted by a ghostly bag of soot! This horrific phantom supposedly attacks anyone who sees it, though quite how a bag of soot would attack you aside from making you dirty, is hard to imagine. Apparently in the 19th century a farmer tried to stand up to the bag of soot but it chased him off.
 
Over the years of my research I have amassed a number of stories of ghostly chickens.

Back in my days as a zookeeper at Twycross Zoo in the midlands, I heard a very odd story. There had been a poltergeist out break in the town of Coleshill . It centred on a supermarket. Pools of urine would form on the floor and items would be scattered about. Witnesses claimed to have seen the ghost of an oven ready chicken waddling around in the store!

Odd as it sounds the above case sounds it is not without precedent. Sir Francis Bacon once killed, plucked and gutted a chicken then packed it with snow and ice on Highgate Hill in an experiment to see how long the cold could preserve its flesh. Since then the plucked, gutted chicken has been seen wandering up and down the hill.

A friend of my colleague Bob Mann, a Newton Abbot based folklorist once moved into an old house with a tumbledown, uninhabited chicken coop in the garden. He reported seeing transparent ghost chickens scratching around in the garden.

Suddenly a chicken walked out into the middle of the road and the car appeared to hit it. Though no impact was felt the men were sure they had struck the chicken.The men stopped and examined the road but found no trace of squashed hen. They carried on About a quarter of a mile on the same thing happened. A chicken walked into the road and the car seemed to pass right through it. The pair began to feel afraid. Every quarter of a mile the phantom hen re-appeared and walked in front of the car. The phenomena lasted for about four miles.

This raises the question, if a dead chicken returned as a vampire rather than a ghost would it put a capon? Are the above stories cases of poultrygeists? Perhaps a packet of Paxo and a copy of Farmer's Weekly may serve an exorsist better than a bell, book and candle in these cases!
 
Polts/bags and chickens!

When Techy and his equally irreverent mates dabbled in the occult as young men they seemed to summon some kind of entity.

It was small, about 3' tall, grey, like a person with a bald head shaped from a transparent balloon filled with moving grey mist.
(I'm asking him now what it was like and he's describing it.)

Over a few days it faded away but came back three times, which visits coincided with minor poltergeist activity in the house. Techy would see it appearing to look at him.

It eventually followed one of Techy's friends home and upset the bloke's mother to the extent that she shouted 'You've brought SOMETHING back with you!' and threw a frozen chicken into the open fire!

The mate had night terrors and attacks of vomiting for a while until everything calmed down.
 
A friend of my colleague Bob Mann, a Newton Abbot based folklorist once moved into an old house with a tumbledown, uninhabited chicken coop in the garden. He reported seeing transparent ghost chickens scratching around in the garden.

Suddenly a chicken walked out into the middle of the road and the car appeared to hit it. Though no impact was felt the men were sure they had struck the chicken.The men stopped and examined the road but found no trace of squashed hen. They carried on About a quarter of a mile on the same thing happened. A chicken walked into the road and the car seemed to pass right through it. The pair began to feel afraid. Every quarter of a mile the phantom hen re-appeared and walked in front of the car. The phenomena lasted for about four miles.

I suspect fowl play.
 
...Odd as it sounds the above case sounds it is not without precedent. Sir Francis Bacon once killed, plucked and gutted a chicken then packed it with snow and ice on Highgate Hill in an experiment to see how long the cold could preserve its flesh. Since then the plucked, gutted chicken has been seen wandering up and down the hill...

I don't have it to hand just now - but I'm pretty sure that Della Farrant in her book Haunted Highgate casts quite a lot of doubt on the authenticity of this rather attractive story.

Unlike too many authors of such locale specific books, Farrant has clearly done plenty of legwork herself, rather than simply reiterated local tales without recourse to research and interviews. Highgate is a notoriously haunted area, with a significant local interest in it's own culture, history and lore - and although it's often suggested that this is a 'well-known' and ongoing phenomenon, I'm pretty sure that Farrant struggles to find anyone local who has heard of any recent manifestations, and I'm not sure that the story is even particularly well-known in the area, compared to other supposedly paranormal ones. It seems to be one of those stories that has more of an online life than it does in the real world.

Farrant also does a pretty good job of demolishing the Bacon stuffed chicken story - already debunked in several histories of Bacon and his life. So the Pythonesque WW2 era story of an RAF man encountering the partly plucked chicken in a blacked out Pond Square (the specific locality of the alleged manifestations) after hearing an apparent replay of the event - hoofbeats, the sound of carriage wheels coming to a sudden halt, squawking chicken - may all be a replay of an event that never actually happened.

The author does make one interesting suggestion in regard to a particular story regarding the chicken allegedly disappearing into a solid brick wall. There is a very narrow alley leading off Pond Square - on a dark night, or a foggy afternoon, and with the witness situated at a certain angle to the event, a chicken running off the square up this alley might actually appear to be disappearing into solid masonry.

It's worth pointing out that Farrant is not by any means a serial debunker - she clearly does believe that there's a lot of oddness in the area, but is obviously just not convinced about the chicken thing.

And yes, she is related to that guy - although her book is admirably neutral on certain related subjects.
 
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This podcast has first hand accounts of some pretty weird entities, and some very spooky manifestations.
They may be PTSD, dementia, sleep paralysis or real spooks, but it's a fabulous range of very weird experiences:
Let's Read episode from July 26, 2019, "10 True Scary Paranormal Ghost Horror Stories."

 
Polts/bags and chickens!

When Techy and his equally irreverent mates dabbled in the occult as young men they seemed to summon some kind of entity.

It was small, about 3' tall, grey, like a person with a bald head shaped from a transparent balloon filled with moving grey mist.
(I'm asking him now what it was like and he's describing it.)

Over a few days it faded away but came back three times, which visits coincided with minor poltergeist activity in the house. Techy would see it appearing to look at him.

It eventually followed one of Techy's friends home and upset the bloke's mother to the extent that she shouted 'You've brought SOMETHING back with you!' and threw a frozen chicken into the open fire!

The mate had night terrors and attacks of vomiting for a while until everything calmed down.
That description of the entity - sounds strange. Was the head swollen looking like a balloon or just normal sized for the body?

The height would be like a child's height....

I can only imagine the mother was horrified to see the strange thing.......I know that if I had children that I would not be pleased to see my child bringing back a weird companion of that sort....:oops:
 
That description of the entity - sounds strange. Was the head swollen looking like a balloon or just normal sized for the body?

The height would be like a child's height....

I can only imagine the mother was horrified to see the strange thing.......I know that if I had children that I would not be pleased to see my child bringing back a weird companion of that sort....:oops:
I'll ask Techy for more details as he doesn't mind talking about it.
 
What is the strangest ghost you have heard of?

I'd have to have a rattle through the bookshelves for details, but I recall one story from Stockport where a woman was confronted by a ghostly figure which appeared to have bits of its body dropping off. I was reminded about this more recently, when reading Brighton Ghosts, Hove Hauntings by John Rackham - where, in one story, a guy working late at night in the cellar of a shop is somewhat bothered by the apparition of a bloated and putrescent, but apparently animated, female figure. That really would curdle your Horlicks, wouldn't it?

I've always been fascinated by a particular element which occasionally appears in older alleged hauntings - that of the weird small phantom animals that accompany some events; creatures which are often almost recognisable as actual animals, but not quite (which somehow makes them more disconcerting than a completely unrecognisable thing, at least to me). If I recall correctly, these are a significant component in one of the SPR investigated stories covered in MacKenzie's classic, Hauntings and Apparitions - I think in the chapter entitled, The Haunted Mill House at Willington, but couldn't swear to that. I'm pretty sure these pop up occasionally in other Victorian and Edwardian tales, but I don't recall anything similar in more modern ones.

Another rare phenomenon that also really intrigues me is the running ghost - I started a thread on the subject many years ago:
Sprinting Spooks? (Swift-Running Ghosts / Entities / Figures) Has to be said, though - the data is rather scant.

Edit: Just reading through that Sprinting Spooks thread again, it strikes me that @CALGACUS03's post (#22) definitely fits here.

It too has chickens.
 
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I'd have to have a rattle through the bookshelves for details, but I recall one story from Stockport where a woman was confronted by a ghostly figure which appeared to have bits of its body dropping off. I was reminded about this more recently, when reading Brighton Ghosts, Hove Hauntings by John Rackham - where, in one story, a guy working late at night in the cellar of a shop is somewhat bothered by the apparition of a bloated and putrescent, but apparently animated, female figure. That really would curdle your Horlicks, wouldn't it?

I've always been fascinated by a particular element which occasionally appears in older alleged hauntings - that of the weird small phantom animals that accompany some events; creatures which are often almost recognisable as actual animals, but not quite (which somehow makes them more disconcerting than a completely unrecognisable thing, at least to me). If I recall correctly, these are a significant component in one of the SPR investigated stories covered in MacKenzie's classic, Hauntings and Apparitions - I think in the chapter entitled, The Haunted Mill House at Willington, but couldn't swear to that. I'm pretty sure these pop up occasionally in other Victorian and Edwardian tales, but I don't recall anything similar in more modern ones.

Another rare phenomenon that also really intrigues me is the running ghost - I started a thread on the subject many years ago:
Sprinting Spooks? (Swift-Running Ghosts / Entities / Figures) Has to be said, though - the data is rather scant.

Edit: Just reading through that Sprinting Spooks thread again, it strikes me that @CALGACUS03's post (#22) definitely fits here.

It too has chickens.
The headless badger at Epworth is another example.
 
The original story that I first read and about which I posted in the Sprinting Spooks thread that @Spookdaddy mentions above came from the Weekend Book of Ghosts (1975) (65p!) and was entitled "Night of Terror on the Road to Annan". Having just bought myself a new printer/scanner I couldn't resist trying it out (the story's shorter than I remembered):

NoTotRtA_1.jpg
NoTotRtA_2.jpg

Pretty weird and, sure enough, it features chickens (well hens).
 
The original story that I first read and about which I posted in the Sprinting Spooks thread that @Spookdaddy mentions above came from the Weekend Book of Ghosts (1975) (65p!) and was entitled "Night of Terror on the Road to Annan". Having just bought myself a new printer/scanner I couldn't resist trying it out (the story's shorter than I remembered):

View attachment 52826
View attachment 52827

Pretty weird and, sure enough, it features chickens (well hens).
Sadly Peter Underwood wasn’t entirely convinced as to the veracity of this tale:

“In 2011 […] Underwood admitted he was never completely happy with the story”

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...nepage&q=derek ferguson annan hen car&f=false
 
I always wondered whether this had anything to do with fumes from the exhaust getting into the car. But why it was only on that road at that time? So that means my theory doesn't stand up unless the car was serviced soon after and or not used for long journeys until a service.
 
There's an old monastic ruin near me with a "monk's mine" where the residents would mine a little seam.

I've visited the mine and been in it but its clearly not safe to hang about inside it!
The old timber supports overhead remind you of imminant danger.

Anyway, the story is a monks robe has been seen blowing around in the wind outside it.
 
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