Roman Soldiers At The Treasurer's House, York

I just found this page which seems to be a news article from 1977 (it's from the american news agency UPI, it says Harry related his story to a group of american journalists) https://www.upi.com/Archives/1977/0...ers-haunt-ancient-city-of-York/6631571073639/
It mentions previous sightings (and a subsequent one):

"By the look of you you've seen the Roman soldiers," the curator said. "As soon as he said this," Harry related, "I knew that it hadn't been a nightmare. I knew then that I'd actually seen it."
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Recently he discovered that he is the third person known to have seen the soldiers. The second was the old curator, seven years before Harry. The first, an American professor back in the 1930s, seven years before the curator.
"He knew about them, he came, he waited in the cellar, he saw them. Which makes those in York think that lots of people seen them. Cause he knew about them. And he knew to come here and sit.
"There's a fourth person to have seen them. I've been to see this fourth person with John Mitchell. And this chappy whose seen them since me, he is mentally very ill. He refuses to discuss seeing the Roman soldiers."
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(John Mitchell is the author who wrote 'ghosts of an ancient city' in 1974, which features Harry's story).
 
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Eponastill said:
I just found this page which seems to be a news article from 1977 (it's from the american news agency UPI, it says Harry related his story to a group of american journalists) https://www.upi.com/Archives/1977/0...ers-haunt-ancient-city-of-York/6631571073639/
It mentions previous sightings (and a subsequent one):




(John Mitchell is the author who wrote 'ghosts of an ancient city' in 1974, which features Harry's story).
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That is a very significant find, great work! We need to find out more about this American professor.
 
Not sure I have read this amount of detail in one post:

"I heard a sound the only way I can describe it is the sound of a musical note. It was just like a trumpet blaring out no tune, just a blare. At the same time, a figure came out of the wall. And the head of the figure was in line with my waist, with a shining helmet.

"I knew that it shouldn't be here and when I say that I was terrified, I mean that I WAS terrified," Harry said, speaking in a rich Yorkshire accent. "I fell off the ladder and scrambled into the corner... and from there I got a bird's eye view of what it was. It was the head of a Roman soldier."

The figure crossed the room at a slight angle and disappeared into the opposite pillar. He was immediately followed by another Roman soldier on horseback, Harry said, and behind the horse, Roman soldiers in twos, walking side by side.

"Now I was in no fit state to count them, but as I say at the time I took a count of between 12 and 20. I was suffering from severe shock, and the immediate relief I got was that not one of them looked in my direction. You couldn't see through them. I saw them exactly as what you i and I are."
The soldiers Harry saw that day were small men, "about 5 feet, in want of a good wash and a shave. Nothing smart about them."

They were dressed in handmade uniforms, Harry said, "like skirts, made of cloth, in various shades of green. "When they came through the wall, I couldn't see even the horse from the knees down. The road had only been excavated in the center of the cellar. The surface is 18 inches below, and I couldn't see them from the feet up until they were walking on the center of the cellar.

"They all had the same helmet on, with the plumes coming out of the back, down the neck. They all carried a short sword on the right-hand side. I used to think that Roman soldiers carried a long sword, but it was like an oversized dagger on the right-hand side.

"The horse I can only describe as a great big cart horse not like the chargers that they use nowadays on the television. And they came as quick as they went.

"When they were in the center of the cellar I could hear like a murmuring. No speech, just a murmuring."

Harry fled from the cellar and collapsed at the top of the stairs, where the old curator found him.

[...]

"They left like a police force over here of volunteers and men that married the local women and when they used to go out on patrol they used to have to go out in parties of between 20 and 40, so they wouldn't be ambushed. When they went out they had to go out for at least a week or a fortnight. And when they came back they'd all be tired, scruffy, wanting a shave. Just like these were."

A few months ago, Harry said, a water main burst outside Treasurer's House, and in fixing it the base of a Roman court was unearthed.

"And they know now that where the cellar wall is, is the exact entrance to the Roman garrison."

In the cellar today is television and sound equipment installed by a British newspaper.

According to Harry, within six weeks of putting it in they picked up a sound of mumbling and horses hooves hitting stones.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1977/0...ers-haunt-ancient-city-of-York/6631571073639/

The newspaper involvement is news to me, too.
 
Also (I really must get on with some work) but I found this relatively recently uploaded video of Richard Felix interviewing Mr Martindale. (I've not watched it yet so don't know what details he gives). I'm sorry but I used to find Richard Felix's contributions one of the most annoying things about Most Haunted (and that is saying something isn't it) but maybe I should take it all back as he seems much more laid back at the start of this.
 
Came across this cartoon.
 

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Not Harry's fault that his descriptions of the troops aren't exact, but these suggest anything from regular Roman soldiers above the Legionary rank to exotic auxiliaries like the Sarmatians (and beyond).
 
Steven said:
Not Harry's fault that his descriptions of the troops aren't exact, but these suggest anything from regular Roman soldiers above the Legionary rank to exotic auxiliaries like the Sarmatians (and beyond).
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Didn't he say that they had round shields rather than the expected rectangular shields? I probably read that on this thread somewhere ages ago.
 
From the comments:

grumpygramps1451​

4 months ago
About 20 years ago now and I was talking to an elderly gentleman, a true gentleman as honest as the days long. He told me of a similar encounter in his younger years when he was a painter and decorator working at Broadgreen hospital in Liverpool. Himself & his 2 colleagues witnessed approx a dozen pairs of legs, waist down (kind of dangling from the corridor ceiling if you could imagine) marching past him & his work colleagues. Their impression was that they were Roman soldiers due to the footwear, they weren’t opaque or see through they were solid images approx 6 foot away from them, he remarked they were so crystal clear an image he could have reached out and touched them they were such a solid image.
 
Not sure what the exact definition of 'ghost' is but these accounts seem more like reports of 'playback' than 'ghosts' in its usual sense.
 
This'll sound typically garbled but...

You know those 'models' that scientists, philosophers and the like came up with to suggest what the human brain is actually like or how it works? I mean, when hydraulics were all the rage then the brain was said to be hydraulic in nature; when electricity was first harnessed then, apparently, the brain was deemed electrical; in our Computer Age, the brain has been compared to a computer. Well, though my point is likely pointless, it strikes me that the general explanation for ghosts was once the return of the dead (an obvious hangover from more religious times than our own) yet now apparitions are often considered explainable in a more secular, scientific manner ('playback'/'recordings'; environmental or electrical disturbance etc etc). Maybe, then, 'the last word' on what ghosts might actually be is beyond us, and our views merely emblematic of our particular times?
 
SimonBurchell said:
That's what made it seem more authentic to me - the little details that were not generally well known at the time.
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It seems that once his account came out in there mainstream media skeptics with backgrounds in Roman history jumped on certain details as inn accurate in order to debunk his claimed experience. However, he has subsequently been vindicated as new findings over the years conformed his details.

Much like the claim by academics that the Romans never settled in Cornwall is now being overturned as new roads and housing developments turn up all manner of Roman remains.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Much like the claim by academics that the Romans never settled in Cornwall is now being overturned as new roads and housing developments turn up all manner of Roman remains.
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steps:

* academics make statement (hypothesis) based on what is known at the time

* new evidence comes to light

* academics revise the hypothesis based on what is known at the time

and rinse and repeat :)

I suspect that most people make statements based on what they have at the time, not just academics.

If the people who had an overview of all the evidence known at the time hadn't come forwards with their statments then they would have been accused of ignoring the story and refusing to engage with lived experience etc etc etc :dunno:
 
Frideswide said:
steps:

* academics make statement (hypothesis) based on what is known at the time

* new evidence comes to light

* academics revise the hypothesis based on what is known at the time

and rinse and repeat :)

I suspect that most people make statements based on what they have at the time, not just academics.

If the people who had an overview of all the evidence known at the time hadn't come forwards with their statments then they would have been accused of ignoring the story and refusing to engage with lived experience etc etc etc :dunno:
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You missed the bit that usually comes between steps 2 and 3:

* new evidence comes to light

* academics dismiss new evidence and proclaim that those announcing the new evidence are either mistaken or deliberately misrepresenting their findings

* academics (are eventually dragged kicking and screaming to) revise the hypothesis based on what is known at the time
 
or (alternative last point) they retire or die and the new theory can then get a foothold.

just how it is isn't it, human nature to cling on egotistically to one's own way of thinking?
Is that Kuhn's theory of the paradigm shift? (maybe realising that Romans were in Cornwall isn't enough to merit being called a paradigm shift though :)
 
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