Ghosts & Gallows (2 page)

The final stage of this unofficial police investigation into the musical ghost was an attempt to capture a photograph of Nicholas himself using a camera loaded with infra-red film. For this, an experienced police photographer named John Cheetham agreed to visit Fallowfield. He attended a preliminary séance where he reported similar experiences to Rowland Mason – the table knocked and levitated, the tambourine danced about the room and Cheetham and his wife, who accompanied him, were touched on several occasions by what appeared to be two hands in the darkness. It was agreed that the following week, the photographer would set up a camera on a tripod aimed and focused at an armchair in a corner of the séance room and, during the course of the sitting, Nicholas would be invited to sit in the chair and the camera would be operated using a cable-release.

The séance took place and at the prescribed point in the proceedings, Cheetham took his infra-red photograph. The resulting print, which was developed at the police laboratory the following morning in front of an expectant crowd of Scenes of Crime officers, showed only an empty chair with a large cushion resting against the back. Nicholas had failed to appear, or had he? Although a simulacrum is the most likely explanation, several of the policemen, including Tony Fletcher, thought that they could see the outline ‘of a very old man, bearded and turned to the right, rather like the head of the old king on a coin’ amongst the creases in the chair cushion. If the photographer had been able to take his infra-red picture while either the tambourine was in flight or Rowland Mason was fingerprinting the ‘spirit’ hands, perhaps something far more interesting would have appeared, but ultimately Cheetham joined the ranks of a number of investigators who have been unsuccessful in effectively bringing infra-red technology into the séance room.

At this point the case of Nicholas the musical ghost, including the unofficial involvement of the Greater Manchester Police, was published in a national newspaper, effectively bringing the investigation to an end. The presence of the policemen, despite the fact that no official police time had been used, came to the attention of the Chief Superintendent of the Greater Manchester CID who requested both men to make written reports, which were completed and filed. Whether Cohen and his team succeeded in ‘laying’ the ghost is unclear, as the Manchester researcher was soon moving on to other things. The case remains a mystery to this day.

As we will see during the course of this book, tales of ghosts and gallows have been with us since time immemorial, as the perpetual human fascination with the strange world of the paranormal is matched only by humankind’s continuing inability to escape from a self-induced and continuous campaign of violence and murder. The involvement of the Manchester Police in David Cohen’s case of the eerie Fallowfield hands is an interesting fusion of the two, but for the psychical researcher and ghost hunter, the organised and serious investigation of hauntings and psychic phenomena is in itself a unique and specialised form of detective work involving a complex mixture – and understanding of – human psychology, investigative reporting and scientific experimentation.

It is interesting to compare the views of respected personalities involved in both fields – criminal investigation and paranormal investigation – as they are both remarkably similar. Peter Underwood, President of the famous Ghost Club for over thirty years and one of Britain’s most experienced paranormal researchers, has described in his 1986 book
The Ghost Hunter’s Guide
the ghost hunter as someone who seeks ‘to discover and record as objectively as possible what people have experienced or believe they have experienced and seek by experimentation to establish scientifically or demolish the reported phenomena’. Writing in his
Memories of Murder
, published the same year as Underwood’s comments, Tony Fletcher felt the best piece of advice he could offer to a young policeman was to remain open-minded:

[w]hether, as in the case of Asru the mummy, he needs to be looking into the past or, because of the need for computerization, the future must be comprehended or, as in the case of the ghost Nicholas, the unknown must be respected, he should always try to look at things with a fresh and open mind.

Both the psychical researcher and the policeman, despite the politics, media scrutiny and entertainment exploitation of their individual professions, are continually involved in a diligent and patient search for the truth.

This book is a collection of accounts of British murders that have some connection with the world of the unseen: psychic detection, prophetic dreams, mediumship, as well as ghosts and hauntings associated with both murderers and their victims. In order to establish the relevance and introduce particular aspects of the various cases under discussion – both criminal and paranormal – I have, out of necessity, made mention of and included material from other sources, such as various international cases of murder and psychic phenomena, which I feel are pertinent to the discussions at hand. I also have a personal interest in the history of psychical research and the development of organised paranormal investigation, with the result that some aspects of this fascinating and engaging subject have found their way into the cases that you are about to encounter.

Paul Adams

Luton, Bedfordshire

2012

Early one morning at the beginning of June 1750, a young shepherd, Alexander MacPherson, left his master’s sheiling hut at Glen Clunie, a remote spot in the Cairngorm Mountains over forty miles north-east of Dundee, and set out across the lonely but familiar hillside in the general direction of Dubrach. The landscape was wild and uninhabited but MacPherson made his way with practiced ease around the treacherous mountain bogs and windswept rocks. As he approached an expanse of moorland tract known locally as the Hill of Christie, the Highlander slowed his pace and quickly took stock of the locality before moving forward again, this time seeking out a particular spot amongst the peat moss.

After a short time of searching, MacPherson located a steep bank and began pulling with his staff at a bundle clearly visible under an overhang. Part of the object quickly revealed itself to be a human head, practically decayed down to a skull, but with lengths of mouse-coloured hair still attached and tied back with a faded black ribbon; the rest of the corpse, still wearing a pair of brown brogues and partly covered by strips of faded and weather-beaten material, had also been reduced to a skeleton, which the shepherd now drew out from under the sphagnum. Unsettling as this discovery no doubt was, MacPherson was prepared for it, as he later testified that he had been given specific instructions on where to find the body of this unfortunate person who had been missing, presumed dead, for nearly nine months. The young shepherd had, so he later declared, been given his information by the ghost of the very man whose ravaged remains now lay scattered at his feet. It was a supernatural encounter that was ultimately to make its way without precedent four years later to the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh.

MacPherson’s grim discovery on the lonely Highland moor was played out in the immediate aftermath of the ‘Forty-Five’, the last great Jacobite uprising which saw the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, attempt to reclaim the British throne for the House of Stuart, then in exile in France. On 16 April 1745, a weary Jacobite army, already in retreat, was routed by William, Duke of Cumberland at Culloden. Over 1,500 of Stuart’s men were killed and in the weeks that followed, amid Cumberland’s brutal repercussions as defeated Jacobites were hunted down and brought to trial, the Bonnie Prince became a fugitive before finally escaping on a French frigate to the Continent.

The Hanoverian government was quick to put in place measures to quell any future revolt and to stamp out the last embers of the rebellion as those of Stuart’s fighters who had escaped imprisonment or execution melted back into the Highlands. Parliament passed the Heritable Jurisdictions Act of 1746 that stripped the Scottish lords of much of their power, while the Proscription Act of the same year was a powerful measure to destroy the clan system by outlawing traditional Highland dress – anyone caught wearing tartan faced a prison sentence of up to six months and transportation for a second offence. Garrisons were established in districts where Stuart sympathisers were suspected of remaining active and these supplied troops to smaller outposts in rural locations who carried out regular patrols, constantly on the lookout for signs of underground rebellion or resistance to the new laws.

One such station was located at Dubrach, a small upland farmstead in the clachen of Inverey in Braemar (the last place in eastern Scotland where Gaelic was still spoken in the 1930s) and two miles from where Alexander MacPherson lodged with his employers, the MacHardie family. In June 1749, a picket of eight footsoldiers from Lieutenant-General Guise’s regiment stationed at Aberdeen took up a billet at this lonely post, while a second detachment from the same company occupied a similar position at the Spittal of Glen Shee, around eight miles away. Patrols from both stations kept the immediate countryside under close observation and met regularly twice a week at a location equidistant from their respective headquarters to exchange information. An un-named corporal officiated at Glen Shee while at Dubrach, Guise’s men were under the command of Sergeant Arthur Davies, a newly married man whose wife was the widow of the former paymaster of the regiment.

Davies was to spend little short of four months at his billet but during this time, despite being an obvious hate figure for the Highlanders around him, managed to garner a certain amount of respect from the locals through a tactful and somewhat moderate approach in enforcing the laws of the land. Writing about the case for his
Twelve Scots Trials
(1913), William Roughead describes Davies as a likeable man ‘of a genial disposition, a keen and indefatigable sportsman, fearless, thrifty, and particular in his dress.’ Despite these welcome characteristics, they were ultimately to prove disastrous. Additionally, the Englishman’s individual approach to policing the district, namely going out alone in advance of his men on both the outward and return leg of patrols to shoot game, and his habit of carrying two purses, one of green silk holding fifteen and a half guineas in gold and a second of leather containing an unspecified amount of silver ‘for current expenses’, became well known and were factors that lead to tragedy.

On 28 September 1749, Sergeant Davies rose early and made ready to carry out a routine midweek patrol of the district. As was the norm, the Dubrach soldiers were to meet up with their counterparts from Glen Shee and Davies set out in advance of his regular company of men dressed in his usual blue surtout coat, striped silk vest, breeches and brown stockings, and carrying his money purses and a long-barrelled musket, which had been given to him as a gift by a fellow officer. An hour after sunrise the sergeant reached Glen Clunie, where he had cause to stop and briefly detain John Growar, a kilted Highlander who, despite over three years of Proscription, was wearing a tartan coat. Luckily for Growar, he was sent on his way with a reprimand rather than being handed over to Davies’ company of footsoldiers, four of whom were following at a distance. The sergeant’s leniency was most likely due to his desire to spend the day ‘pursuing his sport’ rather than escorting a prisoner to the stockade, and, after dismissing the Scotsman, he continued on his way; the Dubrach soldiers glimpsed him briefly on the skyline as they made their way to the rendezvous, and at one point heard him fire a shot.

Later that afternoon, the Glen Shee company, having met up with the Dubrach soldiers, were returning to their billet when they came across Arthur Davies at a hollow known as the Water of Benow. The sergeant informed them that he intended to walk up onto the Hill of Christie to try and bring home a deer for his evening meal, and, despite the Glen Shee corporal’s reservations on him venturing out alone at such a distance from the station, Arthur Davies, confident of being able to protect himself, parted company with the patrol and the group of soldiers turned for home. They were the last of Guise’s regiment to see him alive.

The following morning it quickly became clear that Sergeant Davies had not returned from his hunting expedition and was in fact missing. The soldiers from Dubrach set out to retrace the route he had taken the previous day but despite a combined search, neither they nor the Glen Shee company could find any trace or indication of what might have taken place. On the following afternoon, a Saturday, a runner was sent to Braemar Castle and a search party mustered, which marched to Dubrach the same day. For the next four days the entire district was scoured, with the local populace being coerced into assisting with the search. However, a week to the day that the Englishman had gone missing, and with no trace as to his whereabouts, the manhunt was abandoned and the search party returned to Braemar.

Despite the rumour spread by the local Highlanders around Inverey that Sergeant Davies had simply deserted, his wife was convinced from the outset that he had been robbed and left for dead somewhere out on the wild and lonely hillsides. As well as the money purses he was known to habitually carry, Davies wore two gold rings, a silver fob watch and had a dozen silver buttons on his waistcoat, which would, she insisted, have been temptation enough for someone to waylay him on his return home to the station. His position in the army was a solid one and his fellow officers conceded that his future career within the service was assured – it was widely accepted that he would receive a promotion to Sergeant-Major at the first vacancy and, as a person, Davies was well-liked and respected throughout the entire company. This, together with the security of his marriage and the great affections of his wife soon convinced the regiment, and the district as a whole, that Sergeant Davies had in fact met a murderer – or murderers – out on the wild expanse of the Hill of Christie, although it was to be over nine months before both the regiment and his wife were to learn with certainty that she had indeed become a widow for a second time.