• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

"YOU Are the Ghost that Haunts This House!"

O

OldTimeRadio

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 15, 2005
Messages
5,521
Last evening (Friday night-Saturday morning) George Noory on the COAST-TO-COAST radio program interviewed Lionel Fanthorpe, science fiction author, Anglican clergyman and Fortean/ paranormal buff.

Fanthorpe related, as a factual experience, a yarn which I have long understood to be an Urban Legend, even before that term was developed. I originally read it as a teenager in the 1950s, most likely in one of the books by the American raconteur (and passable Fortean), Bennet Cerf, the founder of Random House.

Fanthorpe claims that he learned the story from the grandchild (perhaps great-grandchild) of the original percipient.

According to the tale a Britisher married an American lady. The couple visited a manor house with the intention of purchasing it as their domicile. As the butler opemned the door he did a double- take.

He then profusely apologized for his discomforture.

"But you see," he said to the bride, "YOU are the ghost who has long haunted this house!"

According to Fanthorpe the American woman had long dreamed of visiting the same building.

Now in the version I read 50 years ago (and which was published 60 years ago), the experiencer was a BRITISH woman who'd long dreamed of visiting a certain mansion in her dreams, and she had come to deeply love the building. One day out driving in an unfamaliar area she saw the house of her dreams, parked, and approached the great house.

After she knocked on the door and the owner answered she asked if the building might possibly be available for purchase.

"Yes," answered the owner.

"But," the woman continued, "might be haunted?"

"I wouldn't worry about that," answered the owner. "It's only haunted by YOU."

Any other versions? Any actual documentation?

COULD Fanthorp's version BE the original?
 
Catching?

"Ghost" is catching? Like Bird Flu? Quick, call the WHO!

Come to think of it, we all DO become ghosts sooner or later, so I guess death IS infectious!
 
I don't know whether it is based on a 'true' account but I can certainly remember reading a comic strip in a girl's mag when I was a young kid, that used the very same storyline. I'm sure I've also read similar in 'spooky' fictional short story collections but no specifics spring to mind at the moment.
 
it turns out in the movie "an american haunting", the girl being targeted by the "ghost" is the ghost too!
 
Ditto in The Others, though it's how it travels to the conclusion that's the fun part.

I'm not sure what to make of Lionel these days. Thought he was pretty cool once, but after the recent book review he had in FT, one wonders if he's lost the plot a bit...:(
 
Awww, be nice to Lionel!

I'd love to meet him. I have read some of his science fiction, and rather enjoyed it.
 
I thought he was a pretty damn poor show at the unconvention before last. Nonsensical, rambling theory and too great a love for talking about being on TV.
 
Fanthorpe also related, very briefly and sketchily, the story of a man who was found dead on a New York City street, dressed in the clothes of a previous century and with his personal identification as well as the bills and coins in his pockets also dating from the same period.

Although Fanthorpe didn't mention the name, this is the LONG-discredited story of "Rudolf Fentz." All the details come from a SCIENCE FICTION story by the well-known author Jack Finney!

But i have absolutely no desire to be overly- critical of Fanthorpe. He also related a survival- of-death story from his own, personal Anglican ministry which I found quite convincing. And he furnished a fascinating account of his own visit to and down inside the infamous Chase ("Creeping Coffins") Vault in Barbadoes.
 
...and he exorcised the ghost that was haunting the Odeon cinema in Union Street, which was pretty virulent IIRC.
 
Philippa Pearce's story 'Tom's Midnight Garden' also comes to mind for this topic.
 
The situation in Tom's Midnight Garden pretty clearly works out to be physical time travel on Tom's part. Since the still-living Hatty remembers his visits, other explanations such as shared dreaming or astral projection become too complicated. This distinguishes it from the "You are haunting this house" story (which I first encounted as "Mary's Ghost" in a book called The Ghost's High Noon, which rewrote various stories from the folk canon inside a frame of fictional characters telling each other "true" stories), which is a case of astral projection during sleep.

One of the most complex and subtle uses of the theme of times getting mixed up and the living haunting each other can be found in L.M. Boston's Green Knowe series. The children of the Oldknowe family intereact with each other across the centuries, which lie so close together in the still, strange center of Green Knowe that stepping from one generation to another is as simple as crossing the lawn. Tolly's Granny Partridge teaches him to call the other generations he encounters "the Others," rather than ghosts; although most of the Others he encounters are long dead, he meets a young Granny Partridge herself under the yew tree one day while she is still alive and old, so you can see why she would be a stickler for terms.
 
Phantasms of the Living

Could someone kindly check Frederic Myers' old S. P. R. classic PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING to see if there might be a report therein similar to "You are the ghost"? I don't currently own a copy.
 
PeniG said:
....the centuries....lie so close together in the still, strange center of Green Knowe that stepping from one generation to another is as simple as crossing the lawn.
Click to expand...

This reminds me a little of an abortive story I tried to write as a teenager - my young protagonist accidentally discovers that he can visit previous times by strolling certain patterns of streets and blocks in his tree-shaded Midwestern hometown, especially during the electric stillnesses which oftentimes precede thunderstorms. (This works best in North America, where the streets of new towns tended to be laid out in neat, squarish grids, like chess boards.)
 
That's a lovely concept, Mr. Radio. Perhaps you'd be able to write it if you tried again now?

I like Green Knowe time travel best, but I haven't managed it yet. In each of my time travel stories I find I require a mechanism - a combination of relevant artifact, verse, and family connection in A Dig in Time, a fairylike wish-granting entity with some strict limitations in Switching Well (when kids ask me what was in the well, I tend to answer: "A deus ex machina"), and a complex arrangement of dreams, archeological sites, and free will in 11,000 Years Lost. One unpublished (and probably unpublishable) story even used a time machine. This despite the fact that, walking around town, I can often feel the other centuries walking with me! I think that my image of time that enables time travel also requires that a strong force be in place to keep people from casually taking advantage of the possibility and therefore cross-connections, window areas, and conscious manipulation become essential parts of the process.

But I'm dragging us pretty far off the topic, I think.
 
I've read a similar story. Can't remember what it was called but it is a bout a young man that walks the same way home every night and sees this woman at the same spot staring at him, she then disappears and he thinks she is a ghost but really he is a ghost who keeps on doing the same thing every night and the woman is at the same spot every night to figure out who or what he is. seems to be a common idea.The trick is to present it in a nouvel way.
 
PeniG said:
That's a lovely concept, Mr. Radio. Perhaps you'd be able to write it if you tried again now?
Click to expand...

I don't think so, and you are more than welcome to the concept if you can use it. It was devised for a single purpose - to have my protagonist meet Emily Dickinson. (Those Midwestern streets, properly traversed, not only connected with other times but with all other streets during those times, including Amherst, Massachusetts.) I should add that I spent most of my teenage years enduring this mad crush on Emily Dickinson. (I TOLD you I was a strange kid.)

But I'm dragging us pretty far off the topic, I think.
Click to expand...

Not at all. Heck, I started this topic and it may very well concern time travel concepts rather than "ghost" ones, per se.
 
Peni Got Me Thinking

Peni started me thinking along this line - I wonder if any dedicated Civil War re-enactors, Confederate or Union, have had any "real" (that is, paranormal) contacts with 1861-1865 and the actual participants in the War.

And likewise World War One aviation buffs, especially those who fly their own bi-planes (whether vintage Great War craft or exact reproductions).
 
Astral Projection During Dreaming

As Peni pointed out, the Lionel Fanthorpe story with which I opened this thread (and whether it is indeed a true account or merely an Urban Legend notwithstanding) involves astral projection during sleep/dreaming.

This brings to mind the once-famous "Wilmot" case so dear to the heart of the early S. P. R. It is a true "white crow" case, very nearly unimpeachable.

Mr. Wilmot, an American who had been traveling in Europe in 1863 (I think that was the year), returned by steamboat across the Atlantic to the United States. One night he dreamed that his wife (home in the US) entered his cabin in her nightclothes and kissed him on the forehead.

"Some fine fellow YOU are," Wilmot's cabin mate teased him the next morning, "to have strange women enter at night just to kiss you!"

When Wilmot eventually reached home his wife greeted him with the story of HER dream. It had taken place the very same night as her husband's experience and it agreed in every regard. She described the cabin in great detail (there was a very unusual arrangement of the bunks), and said that she felt embarrassed to be in her nightclothes in the presence of her husband's cabin mate.
 
Re: Peni Got Me Thinking

OldTimeRadio said:
Peni started me thinking along this line - I wonder if any dedicated Civil War re-enactors, Confederate or Union, have had any "real" (that is, paranormal) contacts with 1861-1865 and the actual participants in the War.

And likewise World War One aviation buffs, especially those who fly their own bi-planes (whether vintage Great War craft or exact reproductions).
Click to expand...

There is a story that one American Civil War regiment who were camped in gettysburg (I think) but away from the main group of re-enactor woke one morning to the sound of horse coming along the path/road on the other side of the tree they were camped near when the sound of the horses stopped before they reached their camp they sent one of the regiment along the path to see if the what they thought was another group of re-enactoprs would like to join them for an early mornning coffee, but when the man came back he told the group that the path stopped just inside the tree line and that there was nobody anywhere close. Thay aparantly then ddecided that camping with everybody else was a much better idea than being on their own.

I'm sure the full story is on the net somewhere, but I don't have time to find it right now.
 
The Dead Approve

10 or 15 years ago a skeleton was discovered on an American Civil War battlefield. The uniform had completely disintegrated and there was no way to determine whether this young battle casualty had been Union or Confererate.

So he was re-buried as BOTH.

The photograph of the internment shows Union re-enactors on one side of the open grave, Confederate on the other, all in full dress uniform. The Union soldiers have hands linked, with the lead soldier clasping the hand of the Union general. The general holds the hand of the last surviving Union Army widow, who's in a wheelchair. She clasps the hand of the last remaining Confederate widow, also in a wheelchair. The coffin lies directly beneath their clasped hands.

The Confederate widow has her other hand in the grasp of the Confederate general, who's likewise linked to his Confederate troops.

Ypu can't SEE ghosts in the scene, but you can SENSE that the massed dead are ALSO there....and that the dead APPROVE.
 
I read the "You are the ghost that haunts this house" story in one of the old DCC, Marvel or Charlton ghost comics from the 1970s.

Although I don't own a copy of Phantasms of the Living now, I can't recall anything in it which would be instantly be recognized as the source of the story, nor have I seen it mentioned in any reputable books which use POTL as a source--the Wilmot case is often quoted.
 
More ghosts appear in Kent than elsewhere in UK, finds research
Kent has the highest incidence of phantoms and poltergeists while UFOs are much more prevalent in Yorkshire, a new report suggests.
By Nigel Bunyan
Published: 7:00AM BST 28 Sep 2009

Anyone with a fascination for railway ghosts should head for Dorset, while fans of Dick Turpin – the ghost, that is, rather than the historical figure – should book a flight out of Heathrow Airport.

Lionel Fanthorpe, 74, from Cardiff, has spent the past 25 years researching “supernatural phenomena”, and on Monday publishes his findings.

The highlights include such mysteries as the phantom hitch-hiker who climbs into passing cars, a time-slip road that takes motorists back to the 1940s, and the ghost of a one-legged priest.

One of the best known of 109 reports of UFOs in the last quarter of a century occurred in Scotland in January 1986.

Two police officers claim they saw an orangey-red UFO travelling slowly and appearing to fall to the ground.

They described the object as resembling a flying clothes pole.

Over the same period there have been 50 reported sightings of ghosts or apparitions.

These include seven ghosts of policemen, a phantom monk, and numerous apparitions who appear to hail from Medieval times.

Mr Fanthorpe, whose wife, Patricia, helps him with his research, insists that no reported sighting is so “ridiculous” that it does not warrant further investigation.

Thus he has chronicled 21 reported cases of werewolf sightings and the 17 road phantoms said to have frightened passing motorists.

He has also recorded the case of the young girl who has been spotted wandering down the Caterham bypass, reports of spooky footsteps, and the sounds of movement in empty buildings.

Mr Fanthorpe’s research has also covered the phenomenon of crop circles, most notably in Wiltshire.

He is similarly aware of four poltergeists who terrorise people’s homes, plus reports of big cats roaming through woodland in Leicestershire, Norfolk and Suffolk.

So far the ghost of Dick Turpin has only appeared to a single passenger at Heathrow Airport.

Mr Fanthorpe publishes the research on his website http://www.lionel-fanthorpe.com.

He was commissioned to do so in support of a new DVD, Fringe - Season 1, which goes on sale today. (Sept 28)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... earch.html
 
I've seen this story "you are the one that haunts this house" on tv about a year ago.
I was watching a trashy American series called "Fact or Fiction" (I think) with a bearded man hosting 4 mini dramas connected with the paranormal. At the end of each episode he let the viewer decide whether it was fact or fiction and he revealed all at the end.
One of the dramas was a newly married young couple, the bride of which kept having odd dreams about living in a huge mansion. One day she and her husband took a drive househunting and they drove past the mansion, which was for sale. "Thats the house I've been dreaming of, lets take a look". The husband protested saying they could never afford it etc but she was insistent.
They met the estate agent inside, did a tour, loved it but knew the price was out of their reach. The agent told them to make an offer as the vendor thought he house was haunted and just wanted to get out. They offered what they could afford, and the agent went to talk to the vendor. When she came back she said the offer had been accepted. The vendor appeared, looked at the young bride and exclaimed "You, you're the one that haunts this house"!
Apparently according to the host it was a true story....!
 
The classic 1959 horror novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson makes clever use of this theme. I'm told that the first of the two film adaptations, 1963's The Haunting (which I've seen), is superior to the identically titled second (which I haven't) made in 1999.
 
pTerryH said:
The classic 1959 horror novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson makes clever use of this theme. I'm told that the first of the two film adaptations, 1963's The Haunting (which I've seen), is superior to the identically titled second (which I haven't) made in 1999.
Click to expand...

The remake is like one of the special effects-filled Scooby-Doo films only with Catherine Zeta Jones as Daphne.
 
On the subject of Shirley Jackson, her novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle has a similar theme, except those "haunting" the house are still alive (as far as we know). This is seen as a reference to Jackson's real life agoraphobia.
 
Actually, I kind of enjoyed the 1999 Haunting, but, since I'm a text person, I cut movies a lot of slack. I hadn't read the book yet, so I deliberately did not do so. The basic plot of the movie (which is not the same as the plot of the book) doesn't have to suck, but they diffused most of the fear by playing with special effects too much. The intense fear effect of the book and the first movie is created by never once releasing the tension. Every special effect used releases tension.

The 1959 movie is scarier, but suffers the usual adaptation problems. They couldn't keep all the density of the book so they stripped out layers, and the result was that the characters weren't particularly sympathetic - not even Ellie. When I finally read the book, I realized that one of their chief mistakes (an understandable one in the circumstances) was removing the unstated but molasses-thick lesbian subtext, which is one of the things Ellie is learning about herself that makes her situation (she is basically having her adolescent self-discovery rebellion and her midlife crisis simultaneously; enough to drive anyone over the edge) so unbearable. They reinstated this some in the third movie, but of course didn't handle it all that well.

I also think that Ellie is absorbed by the house and becomes one with the ghosts who are already there, so this is less a case of "You're the one haunting" and more "This terrible place is where I truly belong, the only place I've ever been myself."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top