- 2 days ago
The episode features stories of ghosts of kings, prisoners, a screaming skull, and a story of a horse and carriage on stairs.
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00:00Strange apparitions haunt the countryside of England.
00:11Spirits, it is said, lurk in the meadows that once rang with the sound of life.
00:21There are those who swear that the dead have risen.
00:24Some hear the sounds of ghostly horses hurtling up the stone stairs of a castle.
00:38Others bear witness to the cries of an African prince, outraged because he was buried on English soil.
00:47The ancient ghosts of England, it would seem, are the scariest spirits of all.
00:54The ancient ghosts of England.
01:02The ancient ghosts of England.
01:16The ancient ghosts of England.
01:21Author investigator Francis Hitching placed television equipment in a London cellar supposedly haunted by a 17th century cavalier.
01:34On a flickering black and white screen, he may have found the last vestiges, the final earthly remnants of a 300-year-old warrior.
01:51This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
01:56The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
02:07The English countryside has been populated by so many people for so long a time that it has acquired a rich legacy of spirits and ghosts.
02:15A 200-year-old monarch may pace the library of a great fortress.
02:23Henry VIII, we are told, still drags his gout-ridden foot through broken cloisters and cobwebbed passages.
02:32Long-dead prisoners plead for mercy in empty dungeons.
02:39Ancient druids still haunt Stonehenge.
02:45Guillotine victims ride across the rolling plains, carrying their severed heads.
02:55Every generation has added its ghostly collection of vampires, phantoms, and monsters of the netherworld.
03:03Today, a roll call of specters stretches the length of the kingdom.
03:08Perhaps it is the willingness of its citizens to believe in the supernatural.
03:11Whatever the cause, Great Britain, wrote one expert, is the most haunted place on earth.
03:18Ghosts have a tendency to stay in one place, usually the location of their demise.
03:25Since most English castles were built many centuries ago, the apparitions that haunt them have had enough time to scare enough people to become legends.
03:33The people who owned these castles continued to live in them.
03:38Strange sights and hideous noises are considered part of the bargain, along with poor plumbing and drafty rooms.
03:47Ghosts are accepted as eccentric members of the family, and in many cases they were just that before they died.
03:54At Wolverton Manor, for example, we encounter the very rowdy ghost of Lord Thomas Trenchard.
04:01His story is told by his descendant, Captain Thimbleby.
04:05In the early 18th century, Thomas Trenchard, after no doubt a very good dinner party, with a lot of port in his belly,
04:16had a wager with his friend that he could take a horse and carriage up the great stairs, which he indeed did.
04:23And in fact, some of the stairs have been repaired where the edges have been chipped off.
04:28How on earth he got down again, one doesn't know, but he won his wager,
04:34and we hear him going up the stairs every now and again, over the years.
04:38The strange part of Wolverton Manor's ghostly carriage is that it has never been known to return down the stairs.
05:06So much for noisy apparitions.
05:11Authentic English ghosts are not known to physically attack people.
05:16On numerous occasions, however, they have frightened someone to death.
05:20This happened on a lovely country estate in Dorset, and the story is told to us by Emma Leavesley.
05:26My family had owned this house for more than 400 years, I think.
05:33And there were legends that something monstrous appeared in the middle of the night,
05:39and was so frightening that two of my ancestors had actually gone mad after they'd seen it.
05:45I hated sleeping there.
05:47I used to dread going to bed, because I would always have nightmares there,
05:51and I'd wake up in the middle of the night and think they were real,
05:55and there was definitely something horrible about it.
05:58Anyway, one night when my grandmother was a very little girl,
06:02which was about 1880 or 1890,
06:05she and her sister were living in this house,
06:10my grandmother at one end of a corridor,
06:13and her sister at the other end,
06:15probably the same room that I was in,
06:17maybe even the same bed.
06:19One night, they went to bed perfectly normally,
06:27having said goodnight to each other.
06:30And what happened next, no one knows for certain,
06:34but it was obviously absolutely horrifying.
06:36And what happened next, no one knows for certain,
07:06my grandmother rushed down the corridor to see what was happening as she opened the door
07:19she thought she caught a glance of something so horrible that she nearly fainted
07:24but it disappeared almost immediately the worst thing was that when she looked at the bed
07:31her sister had stopped screaming and she was just lying there dead
07:35I hate it as a story and I wish she'd never told me really because I still have nightmares about it
07:42and I'm sure I feel something that that poor girl went through when I slept in that room
07:48in most hauntings sounds are more common than sightings and ghostly rituals are usually performed
07:57by a single figure but in our next dramatization both sights and sounds occur and two 18th century
08:05Englishmen are locked together for eternity
08:08Robin Wordsworth owns Bag Lake House and keeps alive the story of the double tragedy that took place in 1759
08:18there was a man who lived here once called Squire William Light
08:24and he had the front of this house built onto an older house in 1719
08:31this we know for a fact
08:34the rest of the story is really legend
08:38the idea is that Squire Light came home from haunting perhaps a little drunk
08:45with people with the invading
08:48to the hill
08:49the
08:51the
08:51the
08:53the
08:56the
09:04right
09:07the
09:08the
09:12the
09:13the water was shallow but deep enough
09:42to drown a drunken squire the squire's groom went searching for his long overdue master
09:52Pire! Pire Riot! Pire! Pire Riot!
10:00Pire Riot! Pire Riot!
10:17THE END
10:47THE END
11:17THE END
11:19THAT'S THE STORY
11:23AND IT'S STILL BELIEVED IN THE VILLAGE
11:27PEOPLE DON'T CARE TO WALK PAST THIS HOUSE AT NIGHT
11:31THE YOUNGER PEOPLE
11:33AND DURING THE 40 YEARS I'VE BEEN HERE
11:39QUITE A NUMBER OF LEVEL-HEADED PEOPLE HAVE
11:43FELT DISTURBANCES OF VARIOUS KINDS
11:47AND SEEN THINGS AND HEARD FOOTSTEPS
11:51WHICH CAN'T BE ACCOUNTED FOR
11:55AFTER YEARS OF HORRIBLE UNEXPLAINED
11:57SOUNDS THE LOCAL PRIEST
11:59ATTEMPTED TO EXERCISE BOTH
12:01SQUIRE LIGHT AND THE GROOM FROM THE HOUSEHOLD
12:03HIS EFFORTS WERE PARTIALLY SUCCESSFUL
12:07LOCAL CITIZENS BELIEVE
12:09THAT THE SQUIRE IS NOW CONFINED TO THE CHIMNEY
12:11AND MOANS COMPLAININGLY
12:13WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
12:17THE GROOM, HOWEVER, LINGERS OUTSIDE
12:19AND FAITHFULLY CALLS HIS MASTER
12:23THOSE WHO SHARE THE SQUIRE'S TASTE FOR WISKEY
12:27CLAIM THAT THEY SEE HIS SPECTURE
12:29RISING FROM THE PON WHEN THE MOON IS FULL
12:33AS WE SHALL LEARN IN OUR NEXT STORY
12:35THEY SHOULD BE THANKFUL THAT HE DOESN'T SCREAM
12:39MOST CASTLES ARE HAUNTED BY MURKY, INTANGIBLE APPARITIONS
12:51IN MARSHWOOD VEIL, HOWEVER
12:55BETISCOM MANOR IS HAUNTED BY
12:57A VERY TANGIBLE HUMAN SKULL
12:59THAT REFUSES TO BE BURIED
13:01WHEN PROVOKED
13:03THE SKULL'S ANGRY SCREAMS
13:05REVERBERATE FOR MILES
13:07Aaaaah!
13:09Aaaaah!
13:23Aaaaah!
13:25Michael Pinney, the current owner of Bettiscombe Manor, is a direct descendant of Azariah
13:38Pinney, who was exiled to the West Indies in 1685.
13:43While there, he purchased a slave and inadvertently acquired a haunt.
13:50The legend of the screaming skull of Bettiscombe is the legend of a Negro slave.
13:58There is no doubt about that.
14:00And that is how it first grew up.
14:03It was the legend of a prince from Africa who was exported, went through the horror of
14:13the slave trade, became a slave, came back as a body servant, and he then said to his
14:20master, the restitution you've got to see is that I am buried in my own land, not here.
14:29I'm a prince in my own country.
14:31Well, the legend says that he wasn't buried in his own land.
14:38He was taken and buried in Bettiscombe Churchyard.
14:39He was buried in Bettiscombe Churchyard.
14:40He was buried in Bettiscombe Churchyard.
15:01Once buried, horrible screams rose from the grave.
15:26Louder and louder they grew until the skull, according to legend,
15:30worked its way to the surface.
15:35Every attempt to dispose of the skull has brought misfortune
15:38to those living in Bedescombe Manor.
15:41As recently as 1914, local witnesses claim that it has sweated blood.
15:48Today, it resides on an attic shelf in silence, at least for now.
15:55The ghosts of England are not restricted to drafty castles and lonely country estates.
16:00In the very heart of London, a 17th century cavalier, replete with plumed hat and pantaloons,
16:07resides in, of all places, a wine cellar.
16:14In some form, a tavern has operated here for at least three centuries.
16:19Currently, it is called the George Inn.
16:29Bill Grundy is a documentary filmmaker for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
16:33It was the summer of 1975.
16:37I'd just finished making a series of television films about the ghosts of London.
16:42And I came in here for a drink and the landlord came over to me and he said,
16:47like the films, pity it didn't do our ghost.
16:50I said, you got one here in the George Inn?
16:52He said, yes, we have.
16:53I said, do you believe in ghosts?
16:54He said, no, but my wife does.
16:56I asked him to explain.
16:58He said, well, we've been here for years and there'd be no trouble at all.
17:03But one day, 10, between 10 and 11 in the morning anyway, before we opened,
17:08he said, my wife went downstairs into the cell and she came rushing back up,
17:11all white and trembling and said, I'm never going in the cellar again.
17:15She said, it's the fellow down there.
17:17I said, we're not open yet.
17:18There can't be a man down there.
17:20And she said, no, this isn't an ordinary fellow.
17:22He's dressed like a cavalier and he's standing in the corner of the battle vaulting there.
17:28My wife still doesn't go down that cellar.
17:34Grundy contacted Francis Hitching, an author and investigator of strange phenomena.
17:41Hitching placed a camera and a videotape recorder in the supposedly haunted cellar.
17:46I've been investigating ghosts and other related phenomena for a number of years now.
17:53And this sounds to me a particularly good and typical example of a ghost.
17:58That's to say, we're here in a very old building.
18:00One of the oldest basements in London, certainly part of the old London.
18:04Up there is the street itself.
18:06And I dare say you can hear some noises which come across it from time to time.
18:10And the stories that we've heard, the two people, the witnesses, talking about somebody in Stuart costume.
18:17This is typical of the kind of appearance that you get.
18:21Somebody in costume appearing in an old building, sometimes at the same time, sometimes not.
18:27And I feel that it's one that's worth investigating with modern equipment.
18:33Hitching sealed the doors from the inside and remained alone in the cellar throughout the night.
18:43He focused his camera on a dark pillar in the middle of the room.
18:53Much to my surprise, we have found something.
18:56I'd like you to have a look at it.
18:57It's a very surprising image, which is coming on the screen in just a few moments.
19:03Now, I was here at the time that this was taken, and I saw nothing myself.
19:08I think I was looking at the pillar at the time that it was there.
19:11But, look, coming up on the screen is a most extraordinary something.
19:16What is it? A light?
19:18It may be...
19:20If it's a ghost, is that what a ghost looks like?
19:23As I say, I think I was looking at the pillar at the time, but there it is emerging on there.
19:29Nobody else was here, and it's not an earthly thing.
19:35It's nothing that could be created with a torch.
19:38It's got furious images which goes up like that.
19:41I think it's one of the most remarkable ghostly manifestations that's happened, in my experience, looking for them.
19:48Whether or not it's something that can be the same ghost that's gone away now.
19:55Whether or not it's the same ghost as they saw.
19:58Whether it's one of these manifestations that happen sometimes when people go out trying to look for things.
20:03And instead of specifically what they're looking for, some other thing appears out of the fabric of the building.
20:13I just don't know.
20:15Until today, my theory was that under conditions of extreme emotion.
20:20That's to say great pain, great anguish, even great happiness.
20:25That somehow this emotion imprinted itself in the solid fabric of buildings.
20:30And people were able to recognize it, and it came out in the same way that clairvoyants and psychometrists, dowsers,
20:36can pick hold of a solid object and tell you a lot of things about the people who were last there.
20:41That's until today.
20:43But, today I've seen this thing, and I can't explain it.
20:48And so, my explanation yesterday has been torn away.
20:52What I believe tomorrow, I just don't know.
20:54I'll have to look at that again and again, and perhaps one day I'll find out.
20:58What are ghosts, and why do they keep repeating the same actions over and over again?
21:11One theory is that a haunting is a violent release of energy, somehow frozen in space and time.
21:17When weather conditions are exactly right, the action is played back, like a recording.
21:23Impossible?
21:25So were Xeroxing and holography just a few short years ago.
21:29In fact, so were videotape replays, like the one you're watching right now.
21:34People have been seeing and hearing ghosts for thousands of years.
21:38Soon, we may know how and why.
21:41What a tremendous gain that would be for science, and what a tremendous loss for storytelling.
21:48Though I am telling...
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22:08ACRENTA
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