Ghosts at Christmas (6 page)

Her ghost has been seen and heard in the hotel’s Chase Bar. One witness said that while she was sitting in the restaurant area of the hotel, she heard the sound of a young girl coming from
around the corner. We don’t know if the sounds that she heard were sounds of laughter or the sound of sobbing, but, knowing the bar was empty, she decided to venture around and have a look. As she turned the corner – still hearing the girl – she was astonished to find the room completely empty. Not only that, but as soon as she turned the corner and ventured into the room, the noise of the girl immediately ceased, leaving an eerie silence in which one could hear a pin drop.

Another witness claimed to have seen a young girl disappear in front of her eyes while she was having a drink in the bar. The girl, it is said, silently ran into the bar area from around the corner, whereupon she stopped dead in the room. She glanced up at the woman and then vanished into thin air, right in front of her.

Another phantom who makes his presence known at Christmas time is ‘Tommy the Cellerman’, who haunts the Scotia Hotel, a quaint little old pub that sits more or less in the centre of South Shields’ busy shopping precinct, on King Street. This one-time spit and sawdust alehouse became so popular with the South Shields locals that an extension had to be built. Eventually, due to more and more people drinking there, the alehouse was completely demolished and a much larger pub took its place. This wonderful ‘Victorian Long Bar’ still does a rip-roaring trade, even after many years of business.

Tommy the Cellarman was said by some to have died on the premises of the Scotia Hotel back in the mid-1970s, although this is not certain. What is certain is that Tommy walked with a distinct limp, and was quite often seen hobbling around the pub with his trusty old walking stick. After his death, staff at the pub often reported hearing the shuffle of footsteps accompanied by the tap, tap, tap of a walking stick.

What makes the staff believe this is the ghost of Tommy is the fact that these eerie sounds are heard as they make their way up and down the cellar steps, the steps which Tommy used almost everyday while he was alive. It is said that a former landlady once took a photograph of some staff members one Christmas and, when the picture was developed, there was Tommy the Cellarman alongside everyone else, bold as brass. Why he should make his appearance at Christmas is anyones guess. Perhaps Christmas was his favourite time of year, and he simply wanted to join in with the seasonal festivities. I have attempted to track down this elusive photograph, but so far my efforts have sadly proved fruitless.

Tommy can still be heard on occasions as he goes about his usual business – up and down the cellar stairs – tap, tap, tapping as he goes. It seems that Tommy has no plans to leave the pub anytime soon, so who knows, maybe this Christmas, or perhaps the next, he might show up in another festive photo as the staff and patrons celebrate the Yuletide.

An article in the
Somerset Herald
, dated 27 February 1927, states that the area known as Monkswood in the village of Stogursey was once subjected to a haunting. A man going by the initials of B.T. stated that, ‘I have brought to memory something I had not thought of for the past forty or fifty years.’

B.T. goes on to explain that he remembers from his boyhood the ghost story attached to that area and states that any youngsters that happened to pass an area known as Monkswood, when it was getting ‘dimpsy’ (one presume he means dark), had a very real chance of seeing the ghosts. He goes on to mention that one day, near this area, a coach and pair had a terrible accident. The coach belonged to one F.W. Meade-King and was being driven by a local coachman named Mr Tremlet. Mr Tremlet, declared that the accident was no fault of his own and stated that one horse ‘saw something’, resulting in it becoming very frightened and knocking the other horse over. A roundhouse at the local priory, he also claimed, had an underground tunnel that led to the nearby castle. This was the area where the ghosts would ‘take shelter’ during bad weather.

This first letter prompted the response of another reader, dated 6 March 1927, who remained anonymous, to recall his memories of growing up in Stogursey:

So, why do the monks haunt this area? Well, it has been suggested that the Round House was known as a ‘counting house’ during the monk’s occupation of the priory, and by all accounts it had been ‘tampered with’ in some way. Unfortunately, my source does not go into details as to what happened there, but categorically states that, ‘As if to protest this sacrilege, the ghosts of the monks have taken to haunt.’

On 23 October 1642 the Battle of Edgehill took place in Warwickshire. Twenty-four thousand men fought against each other, with many men perishing on the battlefield. The ironic thing is that that particular battle had no victors, with both armies eventually making off in their respective directions after camping out on the battlefield after the fight. The battle was fought between Charles I – who had 11,000 men – and the Earl of Essex – who had 13,000 men – on the sloped banks of Edgehill over-looking the Avon Valley, south of Warwick, and it marked the onset of the English Civil War.

Sixty-two days after the battle, on Christmas Eve, the sounds of battle cries, galloping and neighing horses, and the thud of far-off drums being beaten were heard by three wandering shepherds and many other locals. Then, out of the blue, the two armies appeared in phantom form in the skies over Edgehill, battling out once more the fight that had recently occurred there. This spectral scene was reported to have lasted for many hours before it slowly faded into the ether, leaving the skies over Edgehill silent once more.

Those who saw the spectral forms on 24 December 1642 rushed off to sign declarations to bear witness to what they had seen. This resulted in many people gathering at the site the following night to see if the phantom soldiers would return once
more. December 25 1642 saw the Battle of Edgehill being played out once more in spectral form, giving many more people a chance to see, and verify for themselves, these ghastly visions of brutal warfare. Many people continued to return to the site to see for themselves what everyone was by now talking about but for the next four of five days the vision failed to appear. It was almost a week later (some suggest 31 December) when the ghost armies appeared once more, much to the delight of those who were awaiting them. Interestingly, when King Charles I heard about the visions, he sent some of his men to see the spectacle. It is reported that a number of these men saw the re-enactment and actually recognised some of their fellow comrades while doing so. They all testified this on oath to Charles I.

The following evening, the phantom soldiers took to the battlefields (or battle skies in this case) for one last time before fading away into the atmosphere, never to be seen again. However, it is said that for many years after the Battle of Edgehill, on 23 October, the sounds of the battle could be heard as though it was being played out yet again, only this time no visions appeared. Peter Underwood comments in his book
The A–Z of British Ghosts
that within the space of twelve months of the battle being fought, a small pamphlet was published that described the spectral re-enactment of the armies that fought each other on that fateful day back in 1642. It is thanks to these writings that the story of Edgehill remains in our modern-day literature, and is a testament to the fact that these types of visions do indeed occur.

Why the phantom battle was seen over two nights at Christmas and another two nights a week later and not on the anniversary of the actual battle like the auditory phenomenon was, I guess we will never know for sure.

A newspaper clipping from the
Somerset County Herald
, dated 18 December 1948, carried a fascinating story of kindness, love, sadness, death and joy. This tale of a friendly and warm presence really epitomises the ‘Christmas ghost’.

It was 1730, and one Henry Transom MA arrived in Taunton, Somerset, to begin work at Taunton Grammar School. His specialised subject was ‘Classics’. Henry Transom was a single man aged forty, and rented a number of rooms in a large Tudor-style house in East Street in the town. He was a devout Christian and regularly attended services at his local church, St Mary’s.

Farmers at this time complained that they could not sell their grain due to the lack of demand so the government stepped in with a new, but not so clever initiative. They suggested that the farmers having trouble selling on their grain should begin to brew and manufacture their own alcohol – especially Gin – and pledged to cancel all the taxes on its production, and the need for a licence to sell it. Now, people couldn’t get enough of their
share of the grain. It had gone from one extreme to the other. Of course it wasn’t just the quality beverage-makers making the drink; a great deal of cheap, crude and very badly made alcohol was also produced. Many people were made ill with the ‘dodgy grog’ and health took a serious turn for the worse. Dirty streets, insanitary houses and rotten drinking water helped to pave the way for a widespread outbreak of small-pox and cholera. The death rate, especially in young children, was high.

Henry Transom noticed all of this occurring, and it bothered him. Being the kind of man he was, he decided to try and help the poor and needy. He was inspired by the Greek physicians of ancient history who gave freely to the poor. These Greek healers, who employed the Hippocratic concept of therapeutics, used means such as diets and medicinal herbs, which, it was thought, attained a high level of positive results. This was in stark contrast to the early eighteenth-century methods of treatment such as using bleedings and drugs.

He was prompted into action one night when he came across a sentence in the Bible which read, ‘I was sick, and ye visited me’. He pondered long and hard over the sentence, which seemed to ‘light up’ as his eyes fell across pages. From that point he made regular gifts and donations to his local infirmary – which included seven parcels of delicacies being sent to the convalescents every Christmas. His good deeds won him a place in the hearts of the poorest of people. It was also his goal to build a hospital in Taunton; somewhere for the sick to go. He visited the poor and unwell all over the community, taking gifts and offering prayers for them. In half the cases, it is said, he believed that ‘people needed prayers more that they needed pills’, and ‘meditation, more than they needed medication’. In 1758, after many years of tending to his people, and not realising his dream of the local hospital, he contracted small-pox and sadly died.

Transom’s close friends and colleagues duly paid their homage to him after his death, but noticed something rather
odd while visiting his former rented accommodation on East Street. ‘It had seemed,’ they said, ‘that even after his death, his very essence, his very being, had soaked into the surrounding walls. The warmth of his personality seemed to survive in the rooms,’ they claimed.

Forty-three years passed and in 1801 a corn merchant named George Marshall purchased the property, which included Transom’s former rented rooms. George had a son, an only child, who attended the Grammar School in Taunton. His bedroom was the same one which once housed Transom all those years ago and, coincidentally, he too was called Henry. Some time after moving into the new house, the night before Christmas, Henry became ill. He had contracted pneumonia, so his father had quickly contacted a local nurse, who immediately came to the young boy’s aid. Arriving at the house on Christmas Eve, she hurriedly ran upstairs into the boy’s room to tend to him.

While upstairs, the nurse experienced what she described as ‘two extraordinary phenomena’ happening. She saw a luminous patch mysteriously appear on the bedroom wall in which she saw the distinct outline of a rod and serpent (symbols that were often associated with the Greek physicians). Then, from out of nowhere, appeared a man’s figure across the room. It glided silently past her before placing its hand on to the sick boy’s forehead. A man’s voice then uttered, ‘I was sick, and ye visited me’, before the figure stood upright, and then walked off through the wall. The nurse claimed that the room felt as though it was filled with a ‘gracious presence’ and reported that, from that point on, young Henry began his miraculous road to recovery; a very welcome Christmas gift, to say the least.

Those that knew Transom believed that it was his spirit which had came back to save the life of young Henry, continuing his good work in the afterlife.

Things were not the same in that house from that point. A barrage of weird occurrences were documented, indicating that Transom was indeed still there, making his presence known. For example, a roll of bandages appeared from nowhere one day. On another occasion the family Bible was found open at Matthew, chapter 25, on the page where the sentence, ‘I was sick, and ye visited me’ occurs. Pencil markings began to appear on the walls from time to time, with one scribbling in particular reading the word
latros
, the Greek word for physician. All these incidences supported the idea that Transom was back; but why?