There is, for instance, the story of Dr Anne Ross, the eminent Celtic scholar and a major contributor to this book. Dr Ross does research work for a number of museums, and late in 1971 she was asked to examine two carved stone heads which had been discovered near Hadrian’s Wall. What happened next is best told in her own words:
‘Though there was nothing unpleasant about the appearance of the heads, I took an immediate, instinctive dislike to them. I left them in the box they had been sent in, and put it in my study. I planned to have them geologically analysed, and then to return them as soon as possible to the North.
‘A night or two after they arrived - I didn’t connect this experience with the heads until later - I woke suddenly at about 2 a.m., deeply frightened and very cold. I looked towards the door, and by the corridor light glimpsed a tall figure slipping out of the room. My impression was that the figure was dark like a shadow, and that it was part animal and part man. I felt compelled to follow it, as if by some irresistible force.
‘I heard it, whatever it was, going downstairs, and then I saw it again, moving along the corridor that leads to the kitchen: but now I was too terrified to go on. I went back upstairs to the bedroom and woke Dick, my husband. He searched the house, and found nothing – no sign at all of the disturbance. We thought that I must have had a nightmare (though I could hardly believe that a nightmare could seem so real) and decided to say nothing about it.
‘A few days later, when the house was empty, my teenage daughter Bernice came home at about 4 p.m., about two hours before Dick and I returned from London. When we arrived home, she was deathly pale and clearly in a state of shock. She said that something horrible had happened, but at first would not tell us what. But eventually the story came out.
‘When she had come in from school, the first thing she had seen was something huge dark and inhuman on the stairs. It had rushed towards her, vaulted over the banisters, and landed in the corridor with a soft thud which made her think its feet were padded like those of an animal. It had run towards her room, and though terrified, she felt that she had to follow it. At the door, it had vanished, leaving her in the state in which we found her.
‘We calmed her down as best we could, and feeling puzzled and disturbed ourselves, searched the house. Again, there was no sign of any intruder- nor did we expect to find any.
‘Since then I have often felt a cold presence in the house, and more than once have heard the same soft thud of an animal’s pads near the staircase. Several times my study door has burst open, and there has been no-one there and no wind to account for it. And on one other occasion, when Bernice and I were coming downstairs together, we both thought we saw a dark figure ahead of us- and heard it land in the corridor after vaulting over the banisters.
‘The reason I associate the heads with the haunting, if that’s what it was, is this. Later I learnt that on the night when the heads had first been discovered, the North-country woman who lived next door was putting her children to bed when a horrifying creature – she described it as half-man half-animal – came into the room. She began screaming, and only stopped when her neighbour arrived. She was convinced that the creature had touched her, but what had happened to it, she did not know. There was no sign that anyone had broken into the house, and the incident, like the incidents which have taken place in our house, is quite without rational explanation. The strange thing is, the heads have gone now, back to the museum. But this thing doesn’t seem to have gone with them.
