The Strange Case of Ballechin House & Other Haunted Houses by Charles George Harper 1907
The Tenant of Silverton Abbey—The Strange Case of Ballechin House—Bayhall Manor-house.
A Correspondent, writing to The Standard some years ago, complained of having discovered a genuine haunted house, much against his will, and greatly to his pecuniary loss. By his own showing, he was an Indian official, home on extended leave, and was offered, and took, a five-years' lease of a country mansion, "Silverton Abbey," at £200 a year. The place—-he tells us this was not the real name of it-—had been empty for some years, owing, it was reported, to the difficulty of coming to terms with the landlord; and it bore a look of long neglect. Weeds three feet high choked the garden; but they did not daunt the would-be tenant, who thought the placing of the garden in order would be a pleasant and interesting occupation. He, at any rate, experienced no difficulties with the landlord, and in due course came to terms and entered into possession. Neither he nor his staff of servants had any idea of the place being haunted; but the first suspicion of something being wrong was early coming, for they had not long been settled in the house before the maids were frightened one evening by a Something-—it is more terrible and mysterious when you print it with a capital S—-violently rattling the windows. Then the governess complained that as she lay awake one night a tall, dark lady, with heavy black eyebrows, came toward the bed and made as if to strangle her. The old Scotch housekeeper, with nerves of iron, had her blood almost turned to water and her iron-clad nerves severely wrung one night by a blood-curdling shriek; and the master of the house himself, lying awake, once distinctly saw the bedroom door-handle turned and the door pushed open, and nothing come in. This must have been the worst of all. I think, for my part, I would rather see the Something that had done it. Indeed, I have a very vivid recollection of seeing and hearing a door-handle turn without any visible agency; but it was a case of the handle being caught and suddenly releasing itself. All the same, it was in the meanwhile, before that explanation presented itself, a particularly hair-raising sight.
After these several manifestations, the tenant of "Silverton Abbey" slept—-when he could sleep-—with a lighted lamp and a loaded revolver beside him. When he and his servants complained, the country-folk at length found their tongues, and owned to having long known the house to be, by repute, haunted. He naturally felt aggrieved that no one should have hinted anything of the kind before he was committed to £200 a year for five years, and in writing to the Press bewailed the fact that the law would not, on account of these supernatural occurrences, help him be rid of his unfortunate bargain. "The English law," his solicitor told him, "does not recognise ghosts."
Some sceptical friends pooh-poohed the idea of the uncanny, and ascribed the happenings to rats or draughts. "But," objected the writer of the letter, "whose footsteps sound in 'Silverton Abbey' at dead of night?' Rats,' say some. Rats do not turn door-handles. 'Draughts,' I am told. Rats and draughts do not raise unearthly yells in corridors."
This unfortunate tenant at last found the place unendurable, and could obtain no better offer for the house, including fourteen acres of paddock, than £50 a year.
This may fitly introduce the story of Ballechin House, that, owing to the close and patient investigations of the sounds heard and the shapes seen in and around it, bids fair to become the prime modern instance of alleged hauntings.
One of the most fully ascertained and abundantly witnessed modern instances of hauntings is that exemplified in the strange case of Ballechin House, Perthshire, duly set forth in a substantial
volume entitled, The Alleged Haunting of B--------- House, of which a second edition was published in 1900. Ballechin House does not look a romantic building, and has none of the stigmata of the abodes of ghosts. It is not deserted; the roof appears to be sound, the windows are in good repair, and there is no look of the uncanny anywhere about it. The house is not ancient, and does not even stand upon the site of the old manor-house, demolished when the present building was erected, less than a century ago.
The Stewart family, who own the estate, have been in possession since the sixteenth century. At the time when the present owner, Captain Stewart, let the mansion and the shooting for the season, in August 1896, to a wealthy family, the house already had the reputation of being haunted; but this repute had not been made known to the world at large, and was only a matter of local gossip. It, however, acquired a wider notoriety when, after a residence of some seven weeks, the tenants who had intended to remain for months were driven from the place by the supernatural sights and sounds that constantly disturbed them. When tenants flee from a house, and are even prepared to forfeit the considerable price (paid in advance) at which they hired it, there must obviously be something out of the common in connection with it.
These facts then came to the notice of the late Marquis of Bute, who was keenly interested in spiritualism, and was a member of the Psychical Research Society. He conceived the idea of the question being thoroughly examined, and to that end he, in conjunction with Major Le Mesurier Taylor and other members of the Society, hired Ballechin House for the express purpose of an inquiry being conducted on the spot. This appears to have had the approval of Captain Stewart himself. It should be stated at once that there is no indiscretion committed here in publishing these names and facts, because, although the names are withheld in the title and in the contents of the book already mentioned, they are, as a matter of fact, already public property, the names being freely divulged in the communications on the subject made to the Times in June 1897 by a correspondent, and in the somewhat heated correspondence that followed.
Some mention of the more modern portion of the Stewart family history must here be interpolated. Ballechin House had been the property, and the residence, of Major Stewart from 1834 to 1876, when he died, and was succeeded by the second son of his sister Mary, who on inheriting assumed the name of Stewart. "The old Major," as he is still known at Ballechin, appears to have been a very eccentric person. He had a profound belief in spirits, and spoke frequently of his own intention to return after death. He was very fond of dogs, and kept a large number of them in and about the house; and often declared his belief in the transmigration of souls, and his intention of making his post-mortem reappearance in the body of a particularly favourite black spaniel. These oft-repeated intentions so greatly impressed his relatives and heirs that when the Major died, in 1876, they took especial care that all his dogs, fourteen in number, not forgetting the black spaniel, should immediately be shot. This seems conclusive evidence that the Major's spiritual society was not desired.
But the mere execution of these unfortunate dogs does not seem to have been sufficient. Disembodied spirits would appear to have more resources at command than generally suspected, and would certainly seem (if we are to believe the evidence of the hauntings of Ballechin House) to be able, not only to inhabit animals, but to bring the ghosts of animals in evidence to the senses of sight, smell, and touch. The supernatural manifestations began not long after the Major's decease. The wife of his nephew was one day making up her household books in the room that had once been the old man's study, and was thinking of anything rather than of the past, when the old familiar doggy scent the room had once worn came overpoweringly back, and she felt herself distinctly pushed by some invisible force, resembling that of an animal.
Other incidents occurred from time to time: knockings, and sounds like explosions, or people quarrelling; but the great era of hauntings did not set in, as already stated, until 1896. But the death of the old Major's nephew and heir, in January 1895, was attended by some unusual circumstances. He was talking, on the morning of a departure for London, to his agent, in his business-room, when three raps were heard, loud enough to interrupt the conversation. He was no spiritualist, and, not seeking to interpret the raps, set off for London, where he was knocked down in the street by a cab, and killed. It appears to have been the opinion of the late Marquis of Bute that the raps were warnings, and that, had they been "interpreted" by the usual methods of spiritualistic seances, the street accident would in some way have been averted. The reasoning seems cloudy.
But to come to the tenancy of the experimentalists in spooks. Lord Bute, Major Taylor, and Miss Goodrich-Freer assembled thirty-five guests in this country house, most of whom knew nothing of its reputation, and considered themselves to be only an ordinary country-house party. The idea was, it will be perceived, to exclude any suspicion that the object in view was to declare a belief in the supernatural manifestations said to be constantly occurring. It was determined that there should be no suspicion of collusion or suggestion, the object of the inquiry being merely to observe and not to proclaim either a belief or a scepticism in the existence of ghosts. Thus, there is no attempt at fine writing in the book, nor any appearance of advocacy for or against; and mere readers of the ordinary "ghost-story" may feel disappointed in its pages; but they have some thrills and creepy passages, notwithstanding the cold, dispassionate language and the formal tabulated statements of the places, dates, and hours of the sounds and appearances recorded. We may pass over the daily and nightly dish of detonating sounds in the corridors, the shuffling of slippered feet, the voices of an invisible man and woman in dispute, in which the words were indistinguishable, the sound as of some one reading aloud, and the like, which although set down by stolid persons of phlegmatic temperament to owls, hotwater pipes, servants' tricks, and collusion among the guests themselves, were proved to have been caused by none of those agencies. Parties of gentlemen sitting up at night armed with sticks, pokers, and revolvers, would effectually have dissuaded practical jokers; and it is to be remarked that but one guest among so many refused to believe in supernatural forces and was disposed to suspect tricks on the part of unknown humourists.
Besides, as one of these investigators remarks, if these manifestations were part of a joke, a joke which persists for over a quarter of a century, as this by that time had done, would itself be a psychological phenomenon worthy of investigation.
But such incidents as resounding bangs against bedroom doors, "as if a very strong man was hitting the panels as hard as ever he could hit," were clearly proved to have been caused by some mysterious force exercised by other than human beings; for on those violently assaulted doors being opened nothing could ever be seen.
The bowed and bent figure of a spectral hunchback, gliding up-stairs, seen by two witnesses, was unnerving, but the most startling phenomenon was undoubtedly the frequent appearance of a spectral black spaniel, seen alike by those who had heard the story of the old Major and by many who had not. One of these last was a guest who, suffering one day from a severe headache, was trying to pass the time with setting up a camera in one of the rooms. He, strange to say, had a black spaniel of his own in the house, and thought he saw it run across the room. It looked larger, he thought, than his own dog; and then he saw his dog run into the room after it and wag his tail and seem pleased at the meeting. Casual mention of the incident elicited the fact that there was no other corporeal spaniel in or about the place.
For guests to be pushed and snuffled at by invisible dogs was a common occurrence, and sounds as of dogs' tails striking, in being waggled, on doors and wainscots, were continually heard; while real undoubted dogs, with no suspicion of anything ghostly about them, would frequently be observed watching the movements of persons or things invisible to merely human eyes. But one of the most unnerving experiences was that of one of two ladies who were sharing the same bedroom. She was wakened in the middle of the night by the frightened whimperings of a pet dog sleeping on the bed, and, looking round in the direction of the animal's gaze, she saw—-what think you?—-nothing but two black paws on a table beside the bed!
An equally disturbing experience was that of a gentleman who saw a detached hand in the air at the foot of his bed, holding a crucifix; but these were not all. With a board called by the author of the book "Ouija"—-which seems to have been a contrivance very similar to, if not identical with, the well-known "planchette"—-the company assembled at Ballechin House procured what is known to spiritualists as "automatic writing," in answer to questions. One of these questions propounded the name of a lady represented in an eighteenth-century oil-painting hanging in the hall. The written answer was "Ishbel" and "Margharaed": Gaelic forms of the names Isabel and Margaret.
Among the less frequent apparitions in human form were those of sometimes one, and on other occasions two, nuns in black, in the grounds or in the house. The first recorded of these was a solitary nun seen weeping in a snow-covered glen. On another occasion there were two, observed simultaneously (but independently of each other) by two ladies, and at the same time by a usually quiet dog with them, which ran up to the figures, barking violently. It is to be remarked here that a sister of Major Stewart's had died as a nun in 1880.
Ballechin House is to be found at Logierait, Perthshire, half a mile from Ballinluig station.
Great Bayhall Manor-house, long years ago become a farm, and now deserted, has in recent years been the scene of manifestations in the ghostly kind. These mystical sights and sounds were duly narrated in the newspapers, and it is quite probable that they lost no circumstances of the marvellous and horrible thereby. According to one account: "The old manor, with its moss-grown roof, its broken doors and windows and its old moat, can be traced back to the reign of King John. For several weeks past persons residing in the immediate neighbourhood have been startled by unearthly noises and groans, and many of the villagers have been heard to declare that they have seen ghostly figures walking about. Such has been the sensation caused in Tunbridge Wells that a number of well-known gentlemen have visited the house and heard what they believe to be 'true spirit noises.' The investigators were armed with heavy sticks, and for upwards of an hour awaited the first sound which was to signalise the presence of ghosts.
"According to the story told by one of them, they were straining eye and ear when suddenly a rumbling noise like the dragging of some heavy body across the floor broke the silence of night. One or two of the explorers were paralysed with fear, but the rest were sufficiently courageous to enter the house. In the cellar below there was a succession of thuds, followed by groans, and the result was that the party beat a hasty retreat. Visits have been paid by other parties, who have reported the groans as 'terrible.' Meanwhile, the village is besieged daily by visitors from all parts of the county, and several men have been posted round the ruins to prevent damage being done."
This interesting place is situated near Pembury Green, and is reached by three quarters of a mile of exceedingly steep and rough pathways leading through hop-gardens. When at last the spot is gained, the old manor-house, built of stone, in a heavy, gloomy classical style, about two hundred and fifty years ago, is seen to lie in a lonely hollow, neighboured only by two modern brick cottages. Melancholy pine-trees and a forbidding pond, eminently suitable for suicides, are fitting accompaniments of the scene of ruin.
The property belongs to Lord Camden, who was obliged to prosecute many of the rowdy and destructive people who made havoc here when the ghost-story was in full vogue eleven years ago.
The unquiet spirit supposed to haunt this spot and to bring a trail of mystery with it is locally said to be that of a lady whose tomb in Pembury old churchyard is the common talk of the neighbourhood. It stands by the porch, and is an altar-tomb bearing the epitaph:
To the Memory of
Mrs. Ann West, late of Bayhall,
In this Parish, who Died April 13th, 1803.
Aged 34 Years.
A large orifice is pointed out, and the story told is that the lady, having been once nearly buried alive, went in a not unnatural dread ever afterwards; and made special arrangements by which she was to be buried in a coffin without a lid, with a hole in the brickwork of the vault, so that, in case of her being really alive and recovering, she could call for assistance. An amplified version of this story declares that she willed her fortune to a man-servant on condition that he placed bread and water on her coffin for twelve months after her presumed decease.
Iron bars are fixed across the opening of the tomb, and it has long been a pastime with country lads to drop stones through, to hear them "drop onter ther cawfin, mister."
As sheer matter of fact, you cannot taste this fearful pleasure, because the vault is closed and the opening is only that of a small air-chamber. But there are many evidences, in the shape of half-burnt matches around the grille, and in the stones pushed through, and the plaster picked out of the church walls, that the story is well known and the place plentifully visited.
It should be added, for the guidance of intending pilgrims, that Great Bayhall Manor-house is quite three miles from Pembury old church, Pembury Green being a modern hamlet.
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