Supernatural (91 page)

This first set of manifestations occurred in 1966 and Phillip was obviously the focus since Diane way away on holiday at the time.
Two days later, they ceased.
But when they began again in 1968, Diane – now fourteen – had become the focus.
The ghost seldom paid a visit during the day, when she was at school.
But in the evening the racket would start – usually a noise like a child beating a big drum – and ornaments would levitate across the room while the lights turned erratically on and off.
Yet the poltergeist did not seem malicious – rather an infuriating practical joker.
After a tremendous crash all the contents of the china cabinet were found scattered around the sitting room, yet not one was even craked.
When the vicar came to try to exorcise the poltergeist and told the family that he thought their trouble was subsidence, a candlestick rose from the shelf and floated under his nose.
The exorcism was unsuccessful.

Diane found it frightening, yet less so than might be expected.
She always had a kind of inward notification when the pranks were about to start.
Hurled violently out of bed with the mattress on top of her, she was unhurt.
When the hall stand – made of heavy oak – floated through the air and pinned her down on the stairs (with a sewing machine on top of it for good measure) she was unable to move and the family were unable to budge it, yet she was not even bruised.
When the ghost – whom they called Mr Nobody – hurled the grandfather clock downstairs so that it burst like a bomb, no one was anywhere near.

At a fairly late stage in the haunting the ghost began to show itself.
Jean and Joe Pritchard awakened one night to see a dim figure standing in the open doorway.
Their next-door neighbour was standing at the sink when she felt someone standing behind her: it proved to be a tall figure in a monk’s habit with a cowl over the head.
It looked so solid and normal that she felt no alarm: then it vanished.
Another neighbour, Rene Holden (who was a bit psychic), was in the Pritchards’ sitting room when the lights went out.
In the faint glow of the streetlamp that came through the curtains she saw the lower half of a figure dressed in a long black garment.

The haunting was nearing its climax.
One evening when the lights went out Diane was heard to scream: the family rushed into the had and found her being dragged up the stairs.
The ghost seemed to have one hand on her cardigan, which was stretched out in front of her, and the other on her throat.
As Phillip and Jean Pritchard grabbed her the ghost let go, and they all tumbled down the stairs.
Diane’s throat was covered with red finger-marks yet Mr Nobody had not exerted enough pressure to hurt her.
Soon after this Jean Pritchard came downstairs to find the hall carpet soaked in water; on the wet surface there were huge footprints.

One day Phillip and Diane were watching television when they both saw the Black Monk – or at least his shape – silhouetted on the other side of the frosted glass door that led to the dining room.
As Phillip opened the door they saw his tall, black shape in the process of vanishing.
It seemed to disappear into the kitchen floor.
And that was the end of the Pontefract haunting.
Mr Nobody disappeared and has not been heard from since.

I spent the whole of that Sunday afternoon listening to recordings of the poltergeist making violent banging noises, and questioning the family and neighbours.
I also read the accounts contained in the local newspapers at the time.
There could not be the slightest reasonable doubt that the haunting was genuine: there were too many witnesses.

Even if I had not met Guy Playfair some of the features of the case would have puzzled me.
This poltergeist behaved more like a ghost, and its connection with the former Cluniac monastery and the local gallows was fairly well established.
In that case the theory that it was a really a kind of astral juvenile delinquent from Diane’s unconscious mind seemed absurd.
Besides, as Diane described her feelings as she was pulled upstairs by Mr Nobody I experienced a sudden total conviction that this was an independent entity, not a split-off fragment of her own psyche.
When I left the Pritchards’ house that afternoon I had no doubt whatever that Guy Playfair was right: poltergeists are spirits.

It was an embarrassing admission to have to make.
With the exception of Guy Playfair there is probably not a single respectable parapsychologist in the world who will publicly admit the existence of spirits.
Many will concede in private that they are inclined to to accept the evidence for life after death, but in print even that admission would be regarded as a sign of weakness.
Before that trip to Pontefract I had been in basic agreement with them: it seemed totally unnecessary to assume the existence of spirits.
Tom Lethbridge’s ‘tape-recording’ theory explained hauntings; the unconsciousness’ and the ‘information universe’ combined to explain mysteries like telepathy, psychometry, even precognition.
Spirits were totally irrelevant.
Yet the Pontefract case left me in no probability of some local monk who died in a sudden and violent death, perhaps on the gallows, and who might or might not be aware that he was dead.
And I must admit that it still causes me a kind of flash of protest to write such a sentence: the rationalist in me wants to say, ‘Oh come off it.
.
.’
Yet the evidence points clearly in that direction and it would be simple dishonesty not to admit it.

When I returned from Yorkshire I took a deep breath and plunged into the annals of poltergeist activity with the aid of the library at the Society for Psychical Research and the College of Psychic Studies.
The picture that now began to emerge made me aware of how far my preconceptions had caused me to impose an unnatural logic on the whole subject of the paranormal.
It was not so much that the conceptions underlying my previous books
The Occult
and
Mysteries
were wrong as that they were incomplete.
And much of the evidence required to complete them had been staring me in the face from the beginning.

This edition published in the UK and USA in 2011 by
Watkins Publishing, Sixth Floor, Castle House,
75–76 Wells Street, London WIT 3QH

First published in paperback as
The Mammoth Book of Supernatural
by
Robinson Publishing in 1991, reprinted in 1997
Published by Magpie Books, a Division of Robinson Publishing, in paperback as
The Giant Book of the Supernatural
in 1994

Text copyright © Colin and Damon Wilson, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2011

Colin and Damon Wilson have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publishers.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset by Dorchester Typesetting Group Ltd
Printed and bound by Imago in China
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
ISBN: 978-1-90748655-5

www.watkinspublishing.co.uk