Famous Ghosts—Or Are They?

[Aydee_Aitchdee]

Are famous ghosts really who people claim they are? Or are they often just people wearing clothes from the same period. I’m pretty sure anyone with a tricorn hat is claimed to be Dick Turpin.

Heh, I like this idea.

Ghost Betty: Oi Ghost Gladys, go on, do yerself up like Marilyn Monroe and flirt with that manky bloke over there...

Later

I swear on me mum's grave, it were Marilyn and she sang Happy Birthday to me! No I know it's not me birthday, but I know what I saw!

 

[Tunn11]

I believe Oliver Cromwell is said to haunt his former house in Ely. I think, but may be mistaken, that Wellington has been said to haunt his former home Apsley House, in London. A brief google turned up various places said to be haunted by the smell of cigar smoke, which is said to be Churchill, I'll see if I can track down the exact place I was thinking of later.

Thanks, I'll have a trawl through my stuff as well. I wonder what male ghosts will smell of in the future now that fewer people smoke?

 

[MorningAngel]

Thanks, I'll have a trawl through my stuff as well. I wonder what male ghosts will smell of in the future now that fewer people smoke?

Someone smelt of Lynx Africa in something I listened to today (Haunted the predecessor of Uncanny).

 

[SimonBurchell]

Thanks, I'll have a trawl through my stuff as well. I wonder what male ghosts will smell of in the future now that fewer people smoke?

According to a few books I've trawled through, the Duke of Wellington saw the ghost of Oliver Cromwell in Apsley House, there is no mention on the Duke haunting the house himself. Cromwell gets about a bit, because as well as his house in Ely, he haunts the Wig and Pen Club on The Strand, and also Red Lion Square, together with his fellow regicides John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton, although this last has the air of legend about it.

Claydon House (Buckinghamshire), which was the home of Florence Nightingale's sister, is haunted by a grey lady. Florence Nightingale was a frequent visitor to the house, and the association of the grey lady with Florence Nightingale seems a bit speculative.

 

[Aydee_Aitchdee]

Thanks, I'll have a trawl through my stuff as well. I wonder what male ghosts will smell of in the future now that fewer people smoke?

Axe body spray or coffee?

 

[SimonBurchell]

Axe body spray or coffee?

Garlic, cheese and onion crisps etc.

 

[Tunn11]

OK, so what is the earliest "personality" ghost anyone has heard of? Given all the uncertainties of costume etc. we get Roman ghosts, maybe Bronze age (Someone seeing a horse riding ghost he attributed to the Bronze age IIRC) But these are John Doe or Jane Doe ghosts.

Of supposedly identifiable ghosts, as really who can be sure a Tudor ghost is that of Anne Boleyn, who is the earliest? Also, are they still being reported or have reports ceased?

 

[Kiwisaint]

...I recall on Most Haunted that the infamous 'Hanging Judge Jeffreys' seemed to get about a bit with his ghostly 'residual'.

Seemed to crop up in many episodes in the Wales, The West Country and the South of England in various bars and courthouses.

Derek seemed to have an affinity with him.

 

[Sabresonic]

Children claiming past lives is so much more convincing than the Cleoptras.

John Finnemore’s souvenir programme (radio 4) did a great sketch on this.

I always liked this story.

 

[SimonBurchell]

I just came across another haunting associated, rightly or wrongly, with Oliver Cromwell. From Paranormal Cambridgeshire by Damien O'Dell, p23, at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, where Cromwell had studied:

...

Our story begins at 1 a.m. on 1 November 1967 - around the time of Halloween that most appropriate of haunting times. Third-year student John Emslie went to visit his friend Peter Knox-Shaw at Sidney Sussex. He decided to wait and to read in Knox-Shaw's room until his friend returned and as he waited he felt a presence and saw a partial apparition - what looked like a large mouth. At the same time Emslie sensed a gripping feeling in his neck and he also felt cold. Next he saw a floating, pale yellow, emaciated head without ears. The terrified student fled the room, close to panic. Some time afterwards Knox-Shaw himself returned, unaware of his friend's experience. He later recalled that on entering the room he experienced both cold and fear, without any logical reason. The strongest impression, however, was of a pungent, peculiar smell, but he saw nothing. He left his room again and soon bumped into Emslie. The two friends compared notes and Emslie recalled that he, too, had noticed the smell, which was like slightly rotten raw meat.

Linda Nield-Siddall was alone and half dozing at about 4.30 p.m. the next afternoon in her fiancé's, Mike Howarth's, room on the third floor, directly above that of Knox-Shaw. She looked up to see near the light switch, a large pale-blue and purple eye. This eye continued to come and go for some ten minutes. Linda was unaware of the events of the previous evening but was nonetheless nervous and left her room in a hurry. A number of similar incidents were experienced by other students including another sighting of the eye and reports of unusual coldness.

[...]

The witnesses to these strange events never varied their testimony. Over twenty years later the writer Geoff Yeates managed to track down two of them to interview for his book Cambridge College Ghosts, and they stuck to their strange story. Their view was that the paranormal events were directly connected with [...] one Oliver Cromwell.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

I just came across another haunting associated, rightly or wrongly, with Oliver Cromwell. From Paranormal Cambridgeshire by Damien O'Dell, p23, at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, where Cromwell had studied:

...

Our story begins at 1 a.m. on 1 November 1967 - around the time of Halloween that most appropriate of haunting times. Third-year student John Emslie went to visit his friend Peter Knox-Shaw at Sidney Sussex. He decided to wait and to read in Knox-Shaw's room until his friend returned and as he waited he felt a presence and saw a partial apparition - what looked like a large mouth. At the same time Emslie sensed a gripping feeling in his neck and he also felt cold. Next he saw a floating, pale yellow, emaciated head without ears. The terrified student fled the room, close to panic. Some time afterwards Knox-Shaw himself returned, unaware of his friend's experience. He later recalled that on entering the room he experienced both cold and fear, without any logical reason. The strongest impression, however, was of a pungent, peculiar smell, but he saw nothing. He left his room again and soon bumped into Emslie. The two friends compared notes and Emslie recalled that he, too, had noticed the smell, which was like slightly rotten raw meat.

Linda Nield-Siddall was alone and half dozing at about 4.30 p.m. the next afternoon in her fiancé's, Mike Howarth's, room on the third floor, directly above that of Knox-Shaw. She looked up to see near the light switch, a large pale-blue and purple eye. This eye continued to come and go for some ten minutes. Linda was unaware of the events of the previous evening but was nonetheless nervous and left her room in a hurry. A number of similar incidents were experienced by other students including another sighting of the eye and reports of unusual coldness.

[...]

The witnesses to these strange events never varied their testimony. Over twenty years later the writer Geoff Yeates managed to track down two of them to interview for his book Cambridge College Ghosts, and they stuck to their strange story. Their view was that the paranormal events were directly connected with [...] one Oliver Cromwell.

That's interesting.
Last year we visited the ruins of Basing House, site of a major battle during the Civil War and renowned for an alleged apparition of Oliver Cromwell.
This beggars the question can people, whether famous or not, have more than one ghost at different locations?

 

[Steven]

Anne Boleyn's ghost is seen all over the place:

'A number of people have claimed to have seen Anne's ghost at Hever Castle, Blickling Hall, Salle Church, the Tower of London, and Marwell Hall'. (Wikipedia)

 

[catseye]

That's interesting.
Last year we visited the ruins of Basing House, site of a major battle during the Civil War and renowned for an alleged apparition of Oliver Cromwell.
This beggars the question can people, whether famous or not, have more than one ghost at different locations?

I suppose, if the stone tape theory holds, then that could account for multiple hauntings by the same person.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

I suppose, if the stone tape theory holds, then that could account for multiple hauntings by the same person.

Good point.
Recordings can be played back pretty well anywhere and it's not as if ghosts have a solid presence, like the "skulls of Brian Boru"!

https://irish-ayes.blogspot.com/2008/03/skulls-of-brian-boru.html

 

[SimonBurchell]

If ghosts have some level of consciousness and exist in a dream-like state then they may just segue from one location to another.

 

[Steven]

It's very interesting to me that some famous ghosts seem to be 'cultural reminders' (which I hinted at on page one of the thread). For instance, sightings of Anne Boleyn's deceased father and brother appear to suggest a collective admonition regarding their misbehaviour, while sightings of Anne's ghost - so often seeming sad, poignant or wistful - suggest a collective acknowledgement that she was judicially murdered (and also a regret that nobody intervened in that process in order to save her). If there's anything to this whole notion then it's perhaps suggestive of a collective, cultural and social conscience.

 

[catseye]

It's very interesting to me that some famous ghosts seem to be 'cultural reminders' (which I hinted at on page one of the thread). For instance, sightings of Anne Boleyn's deceased father and brother appear to suggest a collective admonition regarding their misbehaviour, while sightings of Anne's ghost - so often seeming sad, poignant or wistful - suggest a collective acknowledgement that she was judicially murdered (and also a regret that nobody intervened in that process in order to save her). If there's anything to this whole notion then it's perhaps suggestive of a collective, cultural and social conscience.

The ghost as 'cautionary tale' - I think there's a lot in this theory.

 

[MorningAngel]

I suppose, if the stone tape theory holds, then that could account for multiple hauntings by the same person.

Oh some ghosts being time slips.

 

[catseye]

Oh some ghosts being time slips.

That is an interesting theory - that time could slip and include the same person at different locations....

 

[Stormkhan]

Which is why I suspect that there is not a 'Unified Theory of Ghosts'.
If you take stone tape/time slip cases, poltergeist/latent psi-powers, non-human apparitions etc. into account, I don't think there's a one size fits all theory which will explain ghost phenomena.

 

[catseye]

Which is why I suspect that there is not a 'Unified Theory of Ghosts'.
If you take stone tape/time slip cases, poltergeist/latent psi-powers, non-human apparitions etc. into account, I don't think there's a one size fits all theory which will explain ghost phenomena.

This forum would only be half the length if there was a unified theory! Half the fun is the musing and the debate.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

This forum would only be half the length if there was a unified theory! Half the fun is the musing and the debate.

Of course it is!
The forum can encompass everyone from the naive credulous to the hard-line sceptics.
That's what makes it so great!

 

[MorningAngel]

Which is why I suspect that there is not a 'Unified Theory of Ghosts'.
If you take stone tape/time slip cases, poltergeist/latent psi-powers, non-human apparitions etc. into account, I don't think there's a one size fits all theory which will explain ghost phenomena.

I’ve often said that. I think I might have even started a thread to that regard.

 

[escargot]

Of course it is!
The forum can encompass everyone from the naive credulous to the hard-line sceptics.
That's what makes it so great!

The hard-line sceptics don't have much to say though. They're not into discussion. It's 'You're all wrong, there's no such thing as ghosts/Bigfoot/UFOs etc!'
To which they get and wander off.

 

[Marwood]

I'm sure I've read local ghost books with places claiming to be haunted by Churchill (a smell of cigar smoke), Wellington and, very recently, so must be in a haunted Buckinghamshire book, Florence Nightingale.

I've just discovered that Florence Nightingale haunts the graveyard near Romsey where she is buried... she gets about!

 

[MorningAngel]

William Terriss is said to haunt Covent Garden underground station. The only problem is it opened a decade after he died. Is it someone else’s ghost being mistaken for him or is he wandering about nosing at the ‘new’ (to him) underground station?

 

[lanky316]

I just came across another haunting associated, rightly or wrongly, with Oliver Cromwell. From Paranormal Cambridgeshire by Damien O'Dell, p23, at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, where Cromwell had studied:

It's inevitably a standard "the school has a ghost" legend passed down by students but another potential Cromwell ghost is in the old family home Hinchingbrooke House. The house has supposedly been haunted by a nun and a Civil War type - sometimes a cavalier, sometimes a roundhead depending on teller - and stories are told from sixth former to year 7 to this day about him or her being seen in the house or the presence being felt but as with all these things it's vague and not much is really recent stories or even claims by recent students of things, nor has anybody really found much aside from the occasional medium being fed bogus information Acorah style to test them.

I did once do a totally scientific test though while working in there one evening however. A few of the youth theatre kids were talking about "the ghosts" and how eerie it was in the library, so with me and the six of them there I did the entirely unscientific thing of asking for a sign, a slight breeze seemed to flow through the library and almost turned the pages on one of their scripts so they (ignoring that the front door had been opened in the old place while someone went out to get breaktime snacks) looked at me as if to say "see". I called it a coincidence and then doubled down by saying we needed more to prove you're there.... Right on cue there goes the fire alarm and everyone has to leave the building. While we're outside and I'm getting terrified daggers the fire brigade turn up and point out that some engineers were doing something with wiring in the main school buildings and accidentally triggered it and couldn't get it to reset. Pure coincidences but I'm sure that led to more pupils spreading the legend!

 

[maximus otter]

I just came across another haunting associated, rightly or wrongly, with Oliver Cromwell. From Paranormal Cambridgeshire by Damien O'Dell, p23, at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, where Cromwell had studied:

...

Our story begins at 1 a.m. on 1 November 1967 - around the time of Halloween that most appropriate of haunting times. Third-year student John Emslie went to visit his friend Peter Knox-Shaw at Sidney Sussex. He decided to wait and to read in Knox-Shaw's room until his friend returned and as he waited he felt a presence and saw a partial apparition - what looked like a large mouth. At the same time Emslie sensed a gripping feeling in his neck and he also felt cold. Next he saw a floating, pale yellow, emaciated head without ears. The terrified student fled the room, close to panic. Some time afterwards Knox-Shaw himself returned, unaware of his friend's experience. He later recalled that on entering the room he experienced both cold and fear, without any logical reason. The strongest impression, however, was of a pungent, peculiar smell, but he saw nothing. He left his room again and soon bumped into Emslie. The two friends compared notes and Emslie recalled that he, too, had noticed the smell, which was like slightly rotten raw meat.

Linda Nield-Siddall was alone and half dozing at about 4.30 p.m. the next afternoon in her fiancé's, Mike Howarth's, room on the third floor, directly above that of Knox-Shaw. She looked up to see near the light switch, a large pale-blue and purple eye. This eye continued to come and go for some ten minutes. Linda was unaware of the events of the previous evening but was nonetheless nervous and left her room in a hurry. A number of similar incidents were experienced by other students including another sighting of the eye and reports of unusual coldness.

[...]

The witnesses to these strange events never varied their testimony. Over twenty years later the writer Geoff Yeates managed to track down two of them to interview for his book Cambridge College Ghosts, and they stuck to their strange story. Their view was that the paranormal events were directly connected with [...] one Oliver Cromwell.

What is reputed to have been the old git’s head was buried at Sidney Sussex about 7 years before the incident described.

Wikipedia on the convoluted story.

maximus otter

 

[escargot]

It's inevitably a standard "the school has a ghost" legend passed down by students but another potential Cromwell ghost is in the old family home Hinchingbrooke House. The house has supposedly been haunted by a nun and a Civil War type - sometimes a cavalier, sometimes a roundhead depending on teller - and stories are told from sixth former to year 7 to this day about him or her being seen in the house or the presence being felt but as with all these things it's vague and not much is really recent stories or even claims by recent students of things, nor has anybody really found much aside from the occasional medium being fed bogus information Acorah style to test them.

I did once do a totally scientific test though while working in there one evening however. A few of the youth theatre kids were talking about "the ghosts" and how eerie it was in the library, so with me and the six of them there I did the entirely unscientific thing of asking for a sign, a slight breeze seemed to flow through the library and almost turned the pages on one of their scripts so they (ignoring that the front door had been opened in the old place while someone went out to get breaktime snacks) looked at me as if to say "see". I called it a coincidence and then doubled down by saying we needed more to prove you're there.... Right on cue there goes the fire alarm and everyone has to leave the building. While we're outside and I'm getting terrified daggers the fire brigade turn up and point out that some engineers were doing something with wiring in the main school buildings and accidentally triggered it and couldn't get it to reset. Pure coincidences but I'm sure that led to more pupils spreading the legend!

This is how it works.

Years ago I tried to show a group of little kids how you will get a 50/50 chance guess right about half the time. I was flipping a coin, catching it and guessing heads/tails.
Unfortunately I kept getting it right which defeated the object.

 

[SimonBurchell]

What is reputed to have been the old git’s head was buried at Sidney Sussex about 7 years before the incident described.

Wikipedia on the convoluted story.

maximus otter

Well, that would explain why the bizarre apparitions were immediately attributed to Cromwell.