A Castle Full of Ghosts...

In my new novel, Those Who Dwell in Mordenhyrst Hall, a family and their ancient stately home are beset by an ancient evil. The entire fabric of the grand house is infected with a legacy of possession - and much more. Worse than that, it extends beyond them, to encompass the entire village of Cortney Abbas. The seemingly frivolous lives of a group of Bright Young Things are about to implode with the arrival of Grace Sutcliffe and before long, the secrets of the Mordenhyrst family are inexorably revealed.

Of course, my novel is just that – fiction. But, in real life, there have been numerous reports of houses cursed or possessed by demons. Sometimes these emanate from the ground on which the house was built. Other times, the builder of the house has somehow managed to impart his – or her – evil into the fabric of the place so that it becomes irrevocably woven into the walls.

In still more cases, the building itself has witnessed so much horror, violence, war and siege that the imprint of its past sticks with it, replaying itself over and over down the centuries.  Rather like a movie, scenes are played out, characters from the past - whose spirits haven’t moved on - appear to those living in the present. Sometimes inflicting little more than mild surprise and, at other times. with terrifying results.

One such place is the fortified castle of Dudley in the West Midlands of England which was founded in 1071, and has a reputation as one of Staffordshire’s most haunted spots. According to legend, the current building was erected on the site of a much earlier wooden structure.

Not just one ghost, but many, are heard and seen – in various rooms, pacing the parapets of the now ruined castle and glimpsed through the windows of the Chapel.

If you venture into the offices when the castle is otherwise empty, you may hear – as others have – footsteps in the same room as you. These ghosts are not shy. They seem quite content to be seen. An entire group of ghosthunters claim to have witnessed a spectral figure pacing across the parapets. An old woman has been witnessed on several occasions, and a drummer boy from the Civil War, who was shot from the battlements, also returns to the scene of his demise, performing different drum rolls. It is said to bring bad luck for you if you hear him.

In 1983 another ghost – that of an elderly Medieval lady – was seen in the castle.

Dudley also has a resident ‘Black Monk’. He has been reported as haunting the entrance to the keep and has also been seen through the window of the Chapel. His presence is not too surprising as the castle is close to the ruins of St James’s Priory, which dates from the 1100s. The priory housed Benedictine monks who wore black habits.

During the English Civil War, the castle became a Royalist stronghold and was besieged twice – in 1644 and then in 1646, when it fell to Cromwell’s forces and was ordered to be partially demolished. In addition to the hapless drummer, the most frightening of Dudley’s ghosts is someone else who perished in the siege of 1646. She is known as the ‘Grey Lady and is thought to be the ghost of Dorothy Beaumont. She has appeared to both staff and visitors over the years. In the 1960s, she was spotted in the old aquarium and in the 1970s, she was seen in the Chapel window.

In life, Dorothy lived in the castle and gave birth there to a daughter who sadly died. She also developed complications and died soon after, having requested that she be buried beside her daughter. She also requested that her husband attend her funeral. Neither wish was granted and Dorothy was buried in a churchyard on the other side of the town from her daughter. They have never been reunited and sad Dorothy is said to roam the castle and beyond, searching for her dead baby. Her ghost appears in many locations including a pub named after her – The Grey Lady Tavern - situated in the castle grounds. Here alarms go off for no reason, in the middle of the night. The temperature suddenly and inexplicably drops, while a strange blue mist wafts through the bar.

Of all the locations in and around the castle, the most haunted is said to be the chapel undercroft. There lies one of the castle’s most formidable lords – John Somery. People have reported seeing legs beside the coffin, others have felt their clothes tugged or thought they were being prodded by someone. One little girl was apparently flipped over a chair during a paranormal investigation and shadowy figures have been caught on camera. Strange, unexplained grinding noises have been heard emanating from the chapel above.

Dudley Castle is brim-full of ghostly snapshots from its tumultuous past. It seems one generation after another has left an indelible mark that refuses to be laid to rest.

Evil runs deep at Mordenhyrst Hall

But it is rooted far deeper than the foundations of the ancestral home. Its inhabitants and the entire village are infested with a legacy so evil, it transcends the laws of nature. In a world where nothing is as it appears to be, Grace and Coralie must seek out and find the truth – whatever the cost.

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The House That Threw Them Out

  

My novel – The Devil’s Serenade – mostly takes place in an imposing Gothic-style mansion built by Victorian industrialist Nathaniel Hargest. When Maddie Chambers inherits it from her Aunt Charlotte, she soon discovers she has acquired far more than mere bricks and mortar. From the strange appearance of tree roots growing in the cellar to the manifestations, noises and a nostalgic wartime song played again and again, Maddie’s fears grow and intensify. What is going on here – and who, or what, is seemingly hell-bent on driving her insane?

Of course, my novel is just that – fiction. But, in real life, there have been numerous reports of houses cursed or possessed by demons. Sometimes these emanate from the ground on which the house was built. Other times, the builder of the house has somehow managed to impart his – or her – evil into the fabric of the place so that it becomes irrevocably woven into the walls.

In Hollyhill on the north side of Cork in Ireland, a family fled their house after being terrorized by a supernatural force. They summoned exorcists to try and cleanse the house of its unwanted and uninvited ‘guests’.

 According to Ritchie Hewitt and Laura Burke who lived in the house with their son, Kyle, the strange phenomena started off quite slowly with holy pictures and icons being thrown around. They heard screams in the night, and then their son was lifted off the bed and hurled to the floor while he was still asleep.

The family also reported seeing orbs flying around, in mid-air, from room to room.

They were left convinced that their house was possessed by an evil force that wished them harm. When they tried praying for it to leave, all they heard was the sound of furniture being moved around upstairs. Drawers were turned out, clothes tossed around the bedrooms.

They asked local people for any help they could give in tracing the possible cause of all the disturbances, but drew a blank. It seemed the house did not have any prior reputation for hauntings or poltergeist activity.

Mediums have reported strong impressions of a young man hanging himself in the house and they believe it is his negative energy that has infected the household. On stepping over the threshold, one such medium – John O’Reilly – had an instant impression of “Someone who is very angry.”

The house itself was owned by the local council and they refused the family’s request for a transfer. Neighbours were reported as having turned on the family accusing them of a “scam” – that the family’s claims were a ruse to get them moved off the estate and into more ‘salubrious’ accommodation. This is a claim the family vehemently denied. Furthermore, they continued to pay rent on the property even after fleeing from their home to live with relatives.

As for the house itself, its previous owner, Adam Payton, lived there for 26 apparently poltergeist-free years prior to selling it to the council. Other people living on the estate said the property was empty for several months, during which time it had been frequented by gangs of youths. There were even reports of séances being held there, often involving Ouija boards.

A local radio station facilitated a visit by Shaman Paul O’Halloran who detected the presence of hundreds of spirits trapped within the house. These included children and famine victims.

The family never returned there and the house remained boarded up and empty for some years. It is now occupied once again - apparently without further incident. So did Paul O'Halloran's cleansing do the trick? Or do the spirits merely lay dormant, only to emerge again when circumstances prove favourable?

They certainly weren't dormant for long at Hargest House, as Madeleine Chambers discovers, to her cost...

Maddie had forgotten that cursed summer. Now she’s about to remember…

“Madeleine Chambers of Hargest House” has a certain grandeur to it. But as Maddie enters the Gothic mansion she inherited from her aunt, she wonders if its walls remember what she’s blocked out of the summer she turned sixteen.

She’s barely settled in before a series of bizarre events drive her to question her sanity. Aunt Charlotte’s favorite song shouldn’t echo down the halls. The roots of a faraway willow shouldn’t reach into the cellar. And there definitely shouldn’t be a child skipping from room to room. 

As the barriers in her mind begin to crumble, Maddie recalls the long-ago summer she looked into the face of evil. Now, she faces something worse. The mansion’s long-dead builder, who has unfinished business—and a demon that hungers for her very soul.

Available in ebook and in a shiny new paperback edition from:

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Come along and say hello!

I shall be at Geek Bazaar at The Liner Hotel, Liverpool |(just behind Lime Street Station) 10-4p.m. on Saturday 27th April, so why not pop along and say 'hi'?

It's a great day out for the whole family - cosplay, artists, authors, traders of all sorts of cool stuff... Not to be missed!

The Pendle Witches

On August 18th 1612, eight women and two men were found guilty of witchcraft at the summer assizes in Lancaster. They were all hanged two days later.

Three of them - Elizabeth Device and her teenage children, James and Alizon - were convicted, in part at least, from evidence supplied by Elizabeth's daughter, Jennet, variously thought to be somewhere between the ages of nine and eleven. So small was Jennet, that a table had to be brought in for her to stand on so that she could be seen. Whether she could be heard or not was a different matter, as the courts were notoriously rowdy places in those days.

For such a young child to be brought in to testify was questionable at best, but she spoke out against her mother, sister and brother and identified others of the accused who allegedly attended a Sabbat on Good Friday of that year, held at her grandmother's house, called Malkin (or Malking) Tower. She spoke of witches' familiars, clay images and curses and appeared calm and collected. As she accused her mother, the poor, wretched woman screamed abuse at her.

Included in this motley bunch of suspects were two feuding families. Anne Whittle (known as Old Chattox) and her daughter, Anne Redferne hated the Devices. The feeling was mutual. It seems they were only too ready to accuse each other of various damning acts of witchcraft. The origin of the bad blood between them is unknown, but it certainly proved fatal for both families.

One of the most interesting characters in this story is Alice Nutter, who ranked far above the others in social status and wealth but was nevertheless identified by Jennet Device as having been at Malkin Tower on that fateful Good Friday. Alice refused to say one word in her defence - possibly because, far from participating in witchcraft, she was a practicing Roman Catholic, a dangerous pursuit in the intolerant Protestant England of James I.

Between them, the unfortunate ten were convicted of no fewer than sixteen murders, along with a catalogue of bewitchings, curses and dark deeds. Their principal prosecutor was the local Magistrate, the ambitious and ruthless Roger Nowell. His methods, along with those employed by the jailkeeper of Lancaster Prison, Thomas Covell, were highly suspect. Although illegal except in cases of suspected treason, there is little doubt that torture was used on at least some of the suspects, in order to illicit confessions. It is also likely that Nowell tricked some of his prisoners into accusing others.

The trials of the Lancashire Witches in 1612, have been kept vividly alive as a result of a detailed account made at the time by Thomas Potts called The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the County of Lancaster. He was commissioned to write this by 'his Majesty's Justice of Assize in the North Parts'. Not that his account could ever be accused of avoiding bias!

The conduct and methods employed in Lancaster were drawn upon eighty years later when a magistrates' handbook, used at the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts, 1692, cited Jennet Device's evidence as a perfect model for the use of child witnesses in trials for witchcraft.

Visitors to Pendle today will find little remaining of the buildings significant at that time. Malkin Tower is long gone and its location hotly disputed. Only Pendle Hill remains, brooding over hilly landscape which has changed little over the centuries. The wind whips over the grass, gunmetal clouds swirl and rain lashes down. It can be harsh living up there even today.

Lancaster Castle, which houses the former prison and the court (still in use), is open to visitors. On the eastern side is the infamous 'Witches Tower', properly called the Well Tower, which is rarely opened to visitors. A flight of steep stone steps leads down to a grim dungeon, in the depths of which are two large metal rings secured into the stone floor. Here it was that the accused were chained, possibly for up to four months, awaiting their trials. Here the mother of Elizabeth Device, the notorious Old Demdike, died before she could be tried. The walls of this place drip with water, allegedly still contaminated by enzymes belonging to bodies buried nearby.

It's not hard to imagine.

My novel, The Pendle Curse, is now available in a lovely new print edition from Crossroad Press! Here's a taste of what to expect:

Four hundred years ago, ten convicted witches were hanged on Gallows Hill. Now they are back…for vengeance.

Laura Phillips’s grief at her husband’s sudden death shows no sign of passing. Even sleep brings her no peace. She experiences vivid, disturbing dreams of a dark, brooding hill, and a man—somehow out of time—who seems to know her. She discovers that the place she has dreamed about exists. Pendle Hill. And she knows she must go there.

But as soon as she arrives, the dream becomes a nightmare. She is caught up in a web of witchcraft and evil…and a curse that will not die.

Available from:

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Oscar, Dorian and The Canterville Ghost

Back when I couldn't have been more than ten years old, I saved up my pocket money and bought a paperback called, Mystery and Imagination, containing the stories dramatised in the TV series of the same name. Naturally, I was far too young to be allowed to stay up late and watch that, so I eagerly devoured the wonderful short stories of the likes of Sheridan le Fanu, my soon-to-be-hero M.R. James, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and many more. But a little gem stood out from the rest, as much as anything because it made me smile. I had my introduction to Oscar Wilde, and the short story was The Canterville Ghost.

The exploits of the hapless ghost of Sir Simon Canterville - as he attempts to frighten off an American invasion of the Otis family into his ancestral home - are a delight. And when poor old long dead Sir Simon is faced with modern detergents used to clean up his recurring bloodstains and Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator applied to his rusting chains, it's enough to make any spectre swear. But the ultimate insult occurs when, his best efforts having failed to raise even the slightest squeak of fear from the unwanted residents, they have the gall to taunt him with a 'ghostly' creation of their own:

YE OTIS GHOST

Ye Onlie True and Originale Spooke

Beware of Ye Imitationes

All others are Counterfeite.

Over the years, I have read and re-read that story countless times and it still raises smiles to this day.

I came across The Picture of Dorian Gray some years later. In fact I saw the film (the version made in 1945) before I read the story. In life, Oscar Wilde worshipped youth and beauty. He loved to surround himself with beautiful, young, vibrant people. Even more so the older he grew. This is evident in his liaison with the much young Lord Alfred ('Bosie') Douglas and in his friendships with the beauties of the day such as Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill (American-born mother of Winston), and the Jersey Lily herself, Lillie Langtry. He is famously quoted as remarking, "Youth is wasted on the young."

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, a talented artist is commissioned to paint a portrait of the wealthy young man of the title. As years go by and Gray leads an increasingly debauched life, he remains young, while in the attic, his picture reflects the ravages of time and sin. The story went through various edits, and in the longer version we now know, Oscar wrote a challenging preface to his readers. He entreated them to judge 'art for art's sake' and stated, 'there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.' With typical Wilde immodesty, he also remarked, 'Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.'

The Picture of Dorian Gray was released to a storm of protest and outrage from reviewers, bordering on the hysterical. He was even threatened with possible criminal investigation as a result of his writing - a sad portent of what was to come a few years later.

It remained Oscar's only full-length published novel.

My Latest Release!

Evil runs deep at Mordenhyrst Hall…

When Grace first sets eyes on the imposing Gothic Mordenhyrst Hall, she is struck with an overwhelming sense that something doesn’t want her there. Her fiancé’s sister heads a coterie of Bright Young Things whose frivolous lives hide a sinister intent. Simon, Grace’s fiancé, is not the man she fell in love with, and the local villagers eye her with suspicion that borders on malevolence.

Her friend, Coralie, possesses the ability to communicate with powerful spirits. She convinces Grace of her own paranormal gifts – gifts Grace will need to draw deeply on as the secrets of Mordenhyrst Hall begin to unravel.

Amazon

Flame Tree Press

Barnes and Noble

Simon and Schuster

Waterstones

Bookshop.org

and all good bookshops - in the high street or online

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Flame Tree Press

Shutterstock