Jeremy Bentham, a Deadly Picture, and the Ghost of Emma Louise...

 

As with so many hospitals in the UK – including my creation the Royal and Waverly in my latest novel, In Darkness, Shadows Breathe - University College Hospital (UCH), in Euston Road, London has been extensively rebuilt and modernized since it first opened in 1906. The present hospital dates from 2004 but stands right there, next to the cruciform building that has become the haunt of a number of spirits – each with their own agenda.

UCH’s most famous ghostly inhabitant is radical social reformer and philosopher, Jeremy Bentham. (1748-1832) He is best known for his espousal of the theory of utilitarianism – namely: “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” He decreed that, on his death, his body should be dissected and then preserved as an ‘auto image’ – self-image – for posterity. His wishes were duly carried out and he is still there (at least, his skeleton is, dressed in his clothes and stuffed with straw). His head is now a lifelike wax replica. He is sitting in a chair, his stick – which he had christened Dapple – resting next to him, in a glass cabinet in the Student Centre.

But it isn't merely his skeleton that remains.

A few years ago, a mathematics teacher, Neil King, was working late one night when he heard the sound of a stick tapping along the floor, at first distant, then coming closer. He paused to see who or what was making the noise. What he saw froze him with fear. The figure of Jeremy Bentham advanced towards him. He came so close, Mr King was convinced the apparition would throw him to the ground. But it didn’t. Bentham’s ghost vanished, leaving the teacher reeling.    

Incidentally, Bentham’s real head still exists – but, after it was stolen as part of a student prank, only to be returned later – it was decided to put it out of harm’s way. Now, it only comes out for special occasions.

he ghost of a student provided a lesser known haunting. She is reputed to have been called Emma Louise and she also haunts the old building. It is said if you call her name three times she will appear. (Now, where have we heard that one before?)

The story goes that there used to be underground tunnels linking the old hospital building with other parts of the campus, including the accommodation quarters of Arthur Tattershall Hall. It is along those tunnels that Emma Louise would travel every day. One day however she never arrived at the hospital for her shift. She was later found dead. Murdered. The crime appears never to have been solved and her spirit wanders.

Years later after Emma Louise's tragic demise, a group of students who also resided at Tattershall – in the very room the poor girl had occupied - decided it would be fun to test out the theory of summoning the former roommate and, having duly assembled, called out her name three times. Shortly afterwards, they heard laughter. But no one in their party was responsible. Despite their best efforts, they failed to trace the source. All through the night, a girl’s voice called out at intervals, even after the students had moved into a friend’s room to escape it. They never discovered who that voice or laughter belonged to.

A couple of nights later, duly returned to their own room, they found the door open. Someone – either of this world or beyond – had painted the words, “HELP ME”, “DIE”. “MURDER” and “RIP” across the wall.

A painting of famous and much-lauded 19th century surgeon, who was also a professor of surgery at University College, London, Marcus Beck, started its own tradition of supernatural activity. It seemed that, if anyone fell asleep under this picture, they would quite likely become ill and possibly even die. As a result, shutters were fixed around it and so began a nightly ritual of closing them to hide the picture from view. It became the night sister’s first duty to secure them and the day sister’s first duty to open them. If this ritual was not carried out, someone would unexpectedly die. The painting in question was stolen in 2001. Its whereabouts are still unknown.

No hospital of this age would be complete without its own version of the ‘grey lady’. In UCH’s case, it is a nurse in a blueish-grey uniform who is seen only when the screens go up around the bed of a really sick person. It is generally believed that the ghost is of a nurse who unwittingly administered a fatal does of morphine and is spending eternity regretting it.

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.

Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

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The Ghosts of Newsham Park Hospital

Image: Tom Tom - Shutterstock.com

My latest novel – In Darkness, Shadows Breathe – spends a significant amount of time in the frighteningly haunted Royal and Waverley Hospital whose walls conceal many dark secrets. Although a fairly modern hospital, my creation is built on land formerly occupied by a hospital, asylum and workhouse and is fairly typical in this. Many of today’s hospitals had multiple functions in their past – or are built on the foundations of earlier institutions whose practices would not be considered appropriate in this day and age.

 

Image: Shelly Jensen - Shutterstock.com

Liverpool’s Newsham Park Hospital shares this murky heritage. Situated not far from the city centre, this crumbling and derelict building once housed an orphanage, hospital wards, a Bell Tower, an attic lined with 18 punishment cupboards where children who misbehaved would be incarcerated alone in the pitch dark, a schoolhouse, mortuary, nurses’ accommodation and chapel. Built in 1869, it variously served as an Orphanage, Psychiatric Hospital and finally an Old People’s Home before closing and being finally abandoned in 1992 when it quickly fell into disrepair. Plans to redevelop it into flats fell through, owing to local opposition, but, since then, stories began to circulate. Strange ghostly phenomena were reported. It wasn’t long before word got around and numerous haunted event companies began organising night time vigils and trips around its desolate corridors which are still littered with broken beds, commodes, wheelchairs, peeling walls and tons of rubbish and detritus – a kind of decrepit Marie Celeste of the medical world.

Image: Artfully Photographer - Shutterstock.com

One of these event companies is Haunted Happenings. Newsham Park is a regular venue for them, and Philip Barron is one of their most experienced ghost hunters and guides. In more than twenty trips around the former hospital, he had witnessed his fair share of the unusual and unexplained and become accustomed to the many individual different experiences members of the same party might report But, on one fateful night, something happened that he had no way of explaining. It all started when, at the beginning of the all-night vigil, the group posed for the obligatory photograph.

The vigil passed off spookily as usual. Everyone had a great time and went home satisfied.

The next morning, Philip uploaded the photograph – again, as usual. What happened next wasn’t usual. The photograph quickly went viral. There were all the smiling, happy faces. The problem was there was one too many smiling faces. No one – and I mean no one – remembered the additional member of the group, a smiling girl. She wasn’t on the tour, well, not officially anyway. Maybe she had somehow sneaked in, and gained entry for free. Except...the simple fact was, she lacked substance somehow. The team tried to find a logical explanation and failed. Equally no one else has come up with one either. It remains one of the many mysteries of the stubbornly haunted Newsham Park Hospital.

Maybe she’s one of the former orphans, or a nurse from its psychiatric hospital days – maybe a patient. Whoever she is, she doesn’t seem too upset by being there.

The mystery ghost joins an ever-expanding collection of phenomena that includes: mischievous poltergeist activity such as workmen’s tools being moved and objects being disturbed when essential work was being carried out on the premises, the sighting of a small child in the attic along with voices heard coming from there, shadowy figures seen in one of the former wards, dragging noises coming from the former dining room, eerie screams and crying coming from the basement and other parts of the building. Then, there’s the overall heavy feeling of dread experienced by many visitors from the minute they cross the threshold. Only to be expected, I would have thought!

Want to see more? Here’s a clip to whet your appetite:

https://youtu.be/mC30MpVymkM

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.

Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

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Flame Tree Press

In Darkness, Shadows Breathe

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions - bending and twisting time itself - and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.

Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

Carol and Nessa – two strangers living widely contrasting lives in the same town. In normal circumstances their paths would never have crossed. But these circumstances are far from normal.

 Carol  Shaughnessy – orphaned and haunted since childhood by an entity whose name she has never known. Her childhood was spent moving from one foster home to another, until the horror of the last one. Now she works in a supermarket while looking after a beautiful luxury apartment. The couple who own it are in Dubai for six months and Carol can hardly believe her luck, but the block of flats overlooks the Royal and Waverley Hospital and is built on the same land formerly occupied by the Victorian Waverley Workhouse and Asylum.

 Within a day of moving in, things start to happen. Strange, unnerving events that Carol struggles to explain. A walk in the grounds of the apartment block proves anything but therapeutic as she finds herself cast back in time, seeing the world through another woman’s eyes – a wife married to a sadistic, controlling husband a century earlier, whose anger is about to overwhelm her.

 That same night, restored to herself once more, Carol finds a poem by a woman called Lydia Warren Carmody. Titled, In Darkness, Shadows Breathe, its words haunt her. She sees a face of a young girl at the window – a girl who mouths the words, “You’re next” and then vanishes into the shadows. From then on, it seems those words are destined to pursue her. She collapses at work and is hospitalized where she meets a woman who takes her through a door into another world – the world of the One and the Many.

 Nessa Tremaine – diagnosed with a rare form of cancer - undergoes extensive, life-changing surgery in the Royal and Waverley, where she soon discovers all is not as it seems. A voice summons her in the dead of night. She finds herself in the workhouse of the past and in contact with pure evil – an entity that controls its chosen servants and continues to thrive. It knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions, capable of bending time and space itself.

 Nessa and Carol are thrown together. Each needs the other, although the reason is unclear. Nessa also finds the poem In Darkness, Shadows Breathe. Like Carol, she is consumed by it. But who was Lydia Warren Carmody and why do her words haunt them? What is the significance of the young girl she, like Carol, encounters?  All Nessa has is question upon question. She must find the answers – for her and for Carol. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.

In Darkness, Shadows Breathe is out on January 19th 2021 and can be pre-ordered here:

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and in bookshops and other online outlets

The Ghost in the Picture

In my new novel, The Garden of Bewitchment, two sisters are obsessed with all things Brontë and one in particular has an unhealthy adoration of Brontë brother, Branwell. She becomes convinced of his actual presence in her life even though he has been dead for decades at the time the novel is set.

The real Branwell Brontë was a complex character who became addicted to alcohol and opiates and caused his father and sisters much grief through his shortcomings. They loved him dearly, but his entire adulthood seems to have been marred by self-doubt, lack of confidence and personal failures. The classic under-achiever, he died young, at the age of just 31. He proclaimed he had done nothing ‘either great or good.

He was a talented portrait artist and at some stage – probably around 1834 (or so it is believed) – he decided to paint a group portrait of his three sisters – Emily, Charlotte and Anne. This famous group painting hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London and is the only time the three writers were ever painted together. Behind them stands a pillar and for many years that’s all it was. Until someone decided to take a closer look. 

The painting itself had something of a chequered history. It was forgotten altogether, folded up and dumped on top of a wardrobe where it was discovered in 1906 by Mary Anna, the second wife of Charlotte Brontë’s husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls.

With the bicentenary of Branwell’s birth in 1817 looming, an examination was undertaken to discover precisely what was going on behind the mysterious pillar which, as time marched on, was gradually revealing a ghostly image.

Modern techniques showed that the painting had originally comprised all four siblings but, probably almost immediately, Branwell had taken the decision to paint himself out. Various theories have been offered for this. Maybe he felt his presence unbalanced the picture, maybe he felt he wasn’t worthy to share centre stage with his prodigiously talented sisters. We will never know the truth, but his decision acts as an uncanny metaphor for his life.

He seems to have been a man of extremes – an all-or-nothing character. When he fell in love, it was with every morsel of his soul and being. Sadly the object of his affections - Mrs Lydia Robinson -was already married. Still he pursued her and Charlotte’s biographer, the writer Mrs Gaskell, described her as Branwell’s ‘paramour’. When Mr Robinson died, Branwell’s hopes of marrying his widow were dashed when she promptly upped and married someone else – someone who could provide her with a more prosperous lifestyle.

Similarly, Branwell’s drinking and drug use rapidly grew to excess and he frequently didn’t even need to pay for the drinks himself. A noted raconteur, his talent to entertain, especially when fuelled by a few glasses of alcoholic beverage, brought him to the attention of the landlord of the local Haworth hostelry, the Black Bull. Whenever a stranger would stay there overnight, Branwell would be sent for to come and entertain with his stories and erudite chatter. The shrewd landlord could then be sure of keeping his guest on his premises until bedtime, rather than losing him to one of the other drinking establishments in the village. Branwell would then make his unsteady way back home to the parsonage a few yards away. 

While his official cause of death would be recorded as chronic bronchitis and ‘marasmus’ (wasting of the body), and tuberculosis (rife in Haworth and elsewhere at the time), his excessive alcohol and opiate consumption cannot have had anything other than a detrimental effect on his already impaired health.

But he had started out with so much promise. As children, the four surviving Brontë siblings (two older sisters - Maria and Elizabeth - died in childhood), lived a fairly insular life, educated by their over-protective father, who was understandably anxious not to lose more of his offspring (Maria and Elizabeth had been sent away to school where they contracted their fatal illnesses). Their father, the incumbent rector of Haworth, bought Branwell a tin of toy soldiers which he love to play with. Before long, he and his sisters were creating stories for them, giving them names and characters and sending them on heroic adventures, wars and battles in their fictional worlds of Angria and Northangerland. All of these were faithfully transcribed in the most exquisite miniature magazines full of poems and stories of heroism which survive to this day (in the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth).

Much was expected of Branwell. He was self-confident, an excellent orator and his talents as a poet, artist and translator of the classics were encouraged by the entire family. As the only boy, with sisters who, as time went on, seemed unlikely to marry, he would need to be able to provide for them. Their father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, was not a man of independent means. Charlotte, Emily and Anne found work as governesses - but unhappily. Charlotte would find an outlet for her misery in writing thinly veiled accounts of her life in Jane Eyre while Emily’s unhappiness took her down the even darker road of Wuthering Heights. Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey is an almost autobiographical account of its author’s time as a governess at Blake Hall, where her charges were spoiled and unruly and her employers unsupportive of her attempts to instil discipline.

 Sadly, artistic and cultural success eluded Branwell culminating in a disastrous trip to London where he was due to submit his drawings to the Royal Academy. The rpecise detail of what happened there remains a mystery but when he returned he was a changed man and it is at that point his life began to unravel. He drifted from job to job, generally losing positions as a result of his excessive drinking and resulting absenteeism.

His disastrous love affair with Lydia Robinson left him devastated. By now he was convinced he was a failure and would never amount to anything. Like the ghost in the picture, he was fading away. Unlike the ghost in the picture, he would not re-emerge.

Branwell’s sketches of himself are quite cruel. In his most famous one, he accentuates his long thin nose and in another - A Parody, perhaps the saddest of the lot – he portrays himself on his death bed with the figure of death waiting by his bedside.

It didn’t have long to wait. Two months after drawing it, Branwell was dead.

(If you want to learn more about the tragic Brontë brother, I recommend the classic biography The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë by Daphne Du Maurier. The Brontë Parsonage in Haworth is beautifully restored and contains a replica of Branwell’s room. Well worth a visit. Their website is Bronte Parsonage)

In my story, Branwell returns - to Claire at least. Death has changed him and the classic warning, 'Be careful what you wish for', echoes through the rooms of Heather Cottage...

 ANNOUNCING:

Blackwell's University Bookshop in Liverpool is hosting my official book launch for Garden of Bewitchment on Thursday February 20th at 6.30p.m. If you can get there, I will be delighted to welcome you. We shall be talking about the ghostly, the Gothic, and anything else that crops up.

The event is ticket only - but the tickets are FREE. Booking couldn't be simpler. Either click onto Facebook or Evenbrite at the links highlighted below;

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Eventbrite

Don’t play the game.

In 1893, Evelyn and Claire leave their home in a Yorkshire town for life in a rural retreat on their beloved moors. But when a strange toy garden mysteriously appears, a chain of increasingly terrifying events is unleashed. Neighbour Matthew Dixon befriends Evelyn, but seems to have more than one secret to hide. Then the horror really begins. The Garden of Bewitchment is all too real and something is threatening the lives and sanity of the women. Evelyn no longer knows who - or what - to believe. And time is running out. 

 

"Cavendish draws from the best conventions of the genre in this eerie gothic novel about a woman’s sanity slowly unraveling within the hallways of a mysterious mansion." – Publishers Weekly  

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On Bewitchment, A Book Launch - and Bronte Inspiration

 "Cavendish (The Darkest Veil) draws from the best conventions of the genre in this eerie gothic novel about a woman’s sanity slowly unraveling within the hallways of a mysterious mansion..."

"...Cavendish successfully maintains the suspense as she dives into the intricacies of her carefully-constructed world. Fans of gothic tropes will appreciate the atmosphere and intensity of this horror tale" 

 To say I was delighted with this review from Publishers' Weekly*, from which the above quotes are taken, is putting it mildly. Blown away is more accurate.

So, what is the reviewer talking about? Here's the official synopsis:. 

Don’t play the game.

In 1893, Evelyn and Claire leave their home in a Yorkshire town for life in a rural retreat on their beloved moors. But when a strange toy garden mysteriously appears, a chain of increasingly terrifying events is unleashed. Neighbour Matthew Dixon befriends Evelyn, but seems to have more than one secret to hide. Then the horror really begins. The Garden of Bewitchment is all too real and something is threatening the lives and sanity of the women. Evelyn no longer knows who - or what - to believe. And time is running out... 

The Garden of Bewitchment is set in the heart of the Pennines in rural Yorkshire. High up on the moors where the Bronte sisters would have walked endlessly in all weathers, the wind whips through the grass and heather on even the mildest of days - and those are few and far between, even in high summer. This is a place where the weather can change from sunny, with blue skies, to freezing rain and gale-force winds in five minutes flat. Sheep farming is tough here - arable farming pretty much unthinkable. You have to be made of strong stuff to survive the winters.

James Elkington.Shutterstock.com

But, in slightly more clement weather, take a walk along narrow well-worn paths and immerse yourself in the timeless experience. You may not see another living soul. It is a place to cleanse and refresh your spirit; somewhere you can scream into the wind, expelling your stress and frustration with modern day living. Gaze at those ancient hills and mountains; they have been there for millennia and will be there for millennia to come. Suddenly your cares, worries and problems are put into perspective. A few hours on a Pennine moor is worth a year of Prozac!

I grew up in Halifax - historic centre of the woollen industry and only a few short miles from Haworth. As a child, I walked those same moors. I would frequently take myself off up there, nearly getting blown over by the wind. I would take shelter up against one of the huge overhanging rocks and let my mind wander, hearing the warning cries of a lone, circling curlew as she (no doubt) informed her young of my presence. But it was the eerie whistling sound the wind made that would thrill me and, when I read Wuthering Heights for the first time, I was transported back up onto those moors.. Every time I re-read it, I get the same feeling,even though it is now decades since I was able to call Halifax my home.

Was it Emily Bronte's book that first drew me into the Gothic? Quite possibly. To me, Gothic literature is all about the evocative, dark atmosphere, and Wuthering Heights is steeped in that. For me, it even has a colour palette all of its own - black, grey, deep purple, swirling and misty. No other book quite does that for me which is why I return to it again and again - the only book I have ever read so often.

For a long time, I wanted to use Haworth as a backdrop for a Gothic horror novel and, in some way, to involve the Brontes. In The Garden of Bewitchment, it is the tragic Branwell who comes to the fore. My character, Claire, is obsessed with him - even though he died before she was born. 

For research, my husband and I stayed in Haworth for a week and went up to the moors more than once. The weather was fair and we sat on a flat topped rock where the sisters themselves might well have rested. Gazing out over the undulating landscape, I let my mind drift. In my mind's eye, I saw the three sisters in their long, cumbersome dresses, hats tied with long ribbons, playing out ideas for their stories while Branwell looked on, smoking a clay pipe, a sketchpad open beside him, charcoal pencil resting on top.

We stayed there for maybe an hour. Not a living soul to be seen. Just the rustling of the grass and heather, birdsong and the kiss of a breeze on my cheeks.

Not much changes up on the moors...

ANNOUNCING

Blackwell's University Bookshop in Liverpool is hosting my official book launch for Garden of Bewitchment on Thursday February 20th at 6.30p.m. If you can get there, I will be delighted to welcome you. We shall be talking about the ghostly, the Gothic, and anything else that crops up.

The event is ticket only - but the tickets are FREE. Booking couldn't be simpler. Either click onto Facebook or Evenbrite at the links highlighted below;

Facebook 

Eventbrite

You can pre-order The Garden of Bewitchment here:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

*follow this link to see the full review