An English Ghost Story (12 page)

This is, indeed, so. In 1923, in the company of the trance medium Irene Dobson and the psychic investigator Edwin Winthrop, I spent a night at Hollow Farm. We saw recognisable human shapes formed out of light and darkness and witnessed the independent movement of objects as heavy as a writing-desk and a sturdy divan. Miss Teazle’s mother was distraught at her inability to keep items of crockery for more than a few weeks before cracks appeared. I saw a row of crystal glasses broken as if exploded from the inside and had to extract splinters from Mr Winthrop’s hand, binding his wounds with a tea-towel. Madame Dobson, an undoubted talent whose name was later tarnished by convictions for fraud, claimed to have communed with angry spirits. They resented our intrusion but had taken a particular dislike to Mr and Mrs Teazle. The ghosts’ intention, it seems, was to drive them out – as a succession of tenants and owners had been driven out in the previous two hundred years.

Our little parapsychological expedition can take no credit for the sudden cessation of hostile manifestations, but Miss Teazle assures me that after our visit there was a moderation of the persecution. Her parents travelled abroad and died while she was away at school. When she returned as young mistress of the Hollow, the place was still haunted but the quality of the haunting had changed. She was able to make accommodations with ‘the older tenants’. Now, Miss Teazle reports that though she has never been alone at the Hollow, malignity or mischief – which she frowns on intently – are rare. ‘I’m used to living with people who aren’t there,’ she claims. ‘Sometimes, they spill out of my head but mistake their way halfway to the page and escape for a while. It’s probably good for them, you know.’

No such fortune was experienced by the Maitland-Middletons, owners of the Hollow from 1851 to 1883. When the last of the Gouches, who farmed the property for generations (Apple Annie is presumed to have been a Gouch daughter), died without issue, the Hollow was bought by Ronald Maitland-Middleton, a visionary architect and transcendentalist philosopher. He sold the surrounding fields, retaining only the orchard and the house. Maitland-Middleton added the towers that are such an unusual feature, giving the large but hitherto humble Gouch house a castellated, somewhat pretentious air. He was killed in a fall from one of his towers, shortly before completion of the building work. His daughter, Primrose, told Timothy Bannerman her mother was convinced Maitland-Middleton was murdered by ‘unknown and unknowable forces’ who resented his ‘casting of light into darkness’. Susannah Maitland-Middleton devoted her life to her husband’s memory and turned the Hollow into a species of school, offering instruction in his beliefs to the materially wealthy but spiritually bereft. Maitland-Middleton proposed that houses be built upon a spiritual as well as a physical foundation, maintaining that every dwelling should be a church, as much a home to angels as to earthly tenants.

When the Reverend Mr Bannerman visited the Hollow, Susannah Maitland-Middleton was well advanced in years and her unmarried daughter driven half out of her mind by decades of living in a house that was ‘home to wicked angels’. In his journal, Bannerman writes that he was ‘initially of the belief that all the spectres of the Hollow were the product of an overactive feminine imagination, whipped up in the unhealthy atmosphere that must inevitably arise when a woman is denied all contact with the outside world, chained to an elderly relation and forced to consider only the thoughts and feelings of the dead.’ He believed Susannah and Primrose were faking the haunting in a lengthy psychological campaign against each other. The mother deemed her daughter somehow to blame for her husband’s long-ago death and the daughter was convinced life had been robbed from her by enforced devotion to the cause of a man she had little memory of and no affection for.

The cleric eventually became as convinced of the reality of the haunters of the Hollow as I was to be a half-century later. Prevailed upon to remain into the evening on his third visit to Mrs and Miss Maitland-Middleton, Bannerman experienced a rare and complete immersion in the Hollow. Besides the transparency of the house and the celestial transformation noted above, he writes of ‘figures in antique costume parading before my startled eyes’ and of a ‘conviction that I was in danger of harm to my person and mind’. His handwriting careless, he mentions that ‘icy points pressed to my cheeks and forehead, as if long, invisible fingers were touched to my face, exerting considerable pressure… my looking-glass tells me that the marks left by this touch have not faded completely. Two fingers apiece touched my forehead and my left cheek, while the impression of a thumb, down to a half-inch scratch that might be made by a raggedly cut nail, marks my right cheek. The spacing of the impressions is such that my own hand, nor I would wager any but the most gigantic of human hands, could not have made them.’

Upon the death (in the orchard, purportedly of a bee-sting) of Mrs Maitland-Middleton, Bannerman ceased his regular visits. He mentions briefly that (somewhat against expectations) Primrose went on to marry a widowed schoolmaster in Wells and quit the Hollow. She sold the property in 1883, to Major Tolliver Brough, a retired officer of the Indian Army who was well aware of his new home’s reputation. Bannerman paid a courtesy call and was told ‘bogeys were not needed in this billet’. The parson reports, with obvious relief, that he could ‘sense none of that queer, weird atmosphere so apparent about the place during the time of the late Mrs M.-M. and her unhappy daughter’. It appears that the haunting went into abeyance while Major Brough devoted his declining years to the cultivation of a rose garden. He trained flowers to stand in neat rows like soldiers at attention, but his efforts somehow lacked the romantic qualities which we care for in such things. The Hollow passed from Major Brough’s son to Miss Teazle’s parents shortly before the First War, whereupon the other residents again poked fingers through the veil.

Bannerman concluded that the Maitland-Middletons had brought upon themselves the supernatural visitations to which he bore witness. This suggests he was unaware of the history of the Hollow, a circumstance that in itself lends weight to elements of his account which parallel those of 1824. The
Blackwood’s
article makes it clear that the Hollow was already a notorious haunted site, and collects statements from Sutton Mallet residents who describe incidents from their own childhoods. Two dotards of the locality were engaged in a spirited argument, in accents that put the ‘Gentleman’ in mind of ‘Olde Englishe’, as to which of them had been in youth the swain bereft by the defection of Apple Annie to the ghostly lover conjured up under the spell of her phantom fruit. He translates (or manufactures) passages from a Latin manuscript he claims to have been shown at Glastonbury Abbey, though no such document resides there now or has ever been noted by anyone less anonymous than this worthy.

In the record, which
Blackwood’s
dates as written in the 1240s but describing events of some thirty years earlier, a monk, Brother Crispin, confesses that he was of a party assembled by the then-abbot after a ‘desperate petition’ from the lord who was master of Sutton Mallet and the surrounding wetlands. Though the fruit of the orchard was plentiful and of high quality, none of the lord’s vassals could be persuaded to gather it for fear of the ‘imps and goblins’ that dwelled among the trees. The fiends would pelt ‘with apples hard as stones’ any intruders of whom they did not approve. Crispin, who went so far as to mention ‘dragons and worms of the earth’, took part in an exorcism, but admits it did not take. Though the quality of the spectral persecutions changed, the orchard was still so haunted as to be useless and fruit rotted where it lay until the ground was thick with ‘insects and wasps’.

The lord and the abbot were not thereafter on good terms and, according to
Blackwood’s
, the orchard was not farmed until ‘it became the property of a free Englishman’. A record does exist from 1322 of a special grant, whereby the property known as ‘the Hollowe’ was detached from the holdings of the manor of Sutton Mallet and gifted to one William Tin, in recognition of ‘his boldnesse during the late floode’. After that, the spirits allowed honest Will to have all the apples he could eat (or turn into
syddur
, ‘strong drink’), though the tributes he paid yearly to the manor and the church rotted when they were removed from the property, and so went for compost. Throughout its history, it seems the Hollow has been particular about the living folk who are its custodians, treating them well or ill according to criteria that remain obscure to Miss Teazle. Though she follows Primrose Maitland-Middleton in identifying several particular ghosts – Apple Annie, the ‘Tudor lady in some distress’, Honest Will Tin, ‘the Damp One’ – she believes them relatively recent additions to a company that arose in the mists of the past. Oddly, Ronald and Susannah Maitland-Middleton, who died suddenly on the property, have never made themselves manifest in the home Ronald explicitly prepared for his afterlife. Were they black-balled by an exclusive order of spectres who found them tiresome?

‘There were ghosts here before there were people,’ Miss Teazle says, with a twinkle in her eye. ‘And, my dear, there will be ghosts here long after the people have gone.’

Though it has not always been so, the Hollow is a happy spot. In researching this book, I have visited many places where the terrors of the past linger like fog in a ditch, where the unquiet spirits of those violently expelled from earthly shells walk in anger or fear or cruel hatred. The Hollow is not like that; I have claimed it as ‘the most haunted spot in England’, but I believe it also among the most magical, the most enchanting. It has supported one of our national treasures and gained from her benign proprietorship. Long may it continue so to do.

T
he family didn’t need a book to tell them they were not alone at the Hollow. They weren’t sure if what was in the paperback really applied to their situation. Much of it came from earlier, perhaps unreliable, sources. Only the conclusion, when the author called the Hollow ‘a happy spot’, seemed to be about the place where they lived. They weren’t guests, but recognised they shared tenancy and resolved to be respectful.

August wore on. Jordan had a birthday, which the family celebrated in the orchard. The first red appeared early among the green, like spilled drops of heart’s-blood.

* * *

T
he night before, when she phoned, Rick was out. Enjoying a last night of freedom with his mates, Jordan supposed. She hoped he wasn’t too hung over to follow her map. She’d worked hard on it, illustrating the turn-offs with pointing hands, depicting the city as a smoky ruin, putting in a little flying saucer to represent Rick and sketching herself in a pin-up pose at the end of the trail. It was fun, but also usable.

If he got on the road early, he should be at the Hollow by mid-morning. She found a floppy hat and Jacqueline Bisset sunglasses, and gave some thought to how she wanted to be discovered. Outside, obviously, so she would be the first thing Rick saw as he drove up, weary and dusty from the trek, smitten all over again by a vision of cool welcome.

The lawn furniture was in the wrong place, round the back of the house. She had to be out front, visible from the drive. And she had to be doing something, not obviously waiting for him. She thought about being found reading. He’d lent her an Iain M. Banks novel she hadn’t got to yet. Reading that would suggest she was thinking subliminally about him while concentrating on something else. But it seemed forced, somehow: something anyone might be doing, not something specifically her. She had read more Louise Teazle, the first Weezie story and two more Drearcliff Grange books, but repetition – all those girls and ghosts – wore thin. She had dipped into the book of West Country ghost stories Mum had been sent. Without the frisson of personal acquaintance with the sites (Which tower had Mr M-M fallen from? Hers or the other?) she found the other chapters too inconsequential to hold the attention. It was hard to take seriously the ghost monkey of Athelhampton Hall, the evil priest of Sandford Orcas Manor, the burning angel of Alder or ‘the gruesome black figure’ of Creech Hill.

No, she would not read. She would do something. Something country. Something Jordan-in-the-country.

Some of the tassels on her shawl –
that
shawl, though it had not danced since the night of revelation – were missing. She thought she could crochet replacements. A restoration project she’d planned to do anyway. She only hoped it wouldn’t get done too quickly. The point was to be found doing something, not snoozing in the sun having done something.

A sward of lawn by the drive was perfectly positioned, looking down a gentle slope at the front gate, which she’d made sure was open. A striped deck-chair could be set up casually, as if it usually lived there. She sat in it and sank alarmingly. No way she could crochet while wobbling in this contraption. She spread a picnic-blanket and set out her sewing basket. She could arrange herself prettily, showing off her newly tanned calves, and still be able to work.

There would have to be music, of course. His or hers? He tolerated her tastes and even, away from his mates, could be prodded into admitting that she had made him listen to things he secretly liked. His official music choices ran to rap and metal, though she thought it was only because the crowd he hung about with were into that stuff. Asked who his favourite artists were, he waffled. She settled on alternating Nancy Sinatra and Fun Lovin’ Criminals CDs. Either would be apt, but not too overwhelming.

When should she tell him? About the Hollow?

Since midsummer, the family hadn’t had another real discussion. It seemed pointless. They had re-read the chapter in the book, but its haunting was not theirs. No icy hands or wailing women. There were no further major displays, but every day something tiny reminded them of the other tenants. None of the family were afraid of the Hollow. Jordan had come to her own understanding and was happy with it. She had always lived with imminent cataclysm: nuclear war, the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign, asteroids and comets in the sky, AIDS, the ever-threatening possibility that her family would burst apart. She was used to uncertainty. The real shock was that things had turned out to be gentle.