The last day of summer in the old Celtic calendar was October 31, and during its night a festival was held to honour the Lord of the Dead, Samhain. Bonfires were lit to summon forth the spirits of the deceased to walk the earth again, and the pagan peoples of those times had an unquestioning belief in the reality of the returning souls. The belief was so powerful, even the introduction of Christianity could not eradicate the festival of Samhain, and so the Church ended up hijacking the ancient feast. The Church elders decreed in AD 834 that All Saints Day was to be moved from May 13 to November 1, and October 31 was to be known henceforth as All Hallow's Eve (Hallows was an antique word for saints). In AD 988, the pagans of Britain were still honouring Samhain, and the Church urged them not to pray to the dead but for them via the saints. The Church's indoctrinating directive had little effect on the psyche of the largely superstitious population, who continued to believe that the departed souls would rise from their cold graves on Hallowe'en and revisit their old homes to warm themselves at the fireside. Bonfires continued to be lit on Hallow's Eve, and the Church elders desperately racked their brains trying to think of a Christian holy day that could be utilised for the archaic pyromania. Perhaps the bonfire day could be moved to some date when a Christian martyr was burnt at the stake. Ironically, the Hallowe'en bonfire cult was later moved to Guy Fawkes Night, to mark the arrest of the conspirator on November 5, 1605.
However, the Church's attempts to sabotage and subvert the ancient Celtic festival was a dismal failure in the end. Nobody today regards Hallowe'en as the night before we pray to the saints; October 31 is synonymous with apple-bobbing (the vestige of a Roman custom), trick or treat, ghosts, witches flitting past the moon's disk on broomsticks, goblins, vampires, skeletons, bogeymen, the Devil, black cats, graveyards, candlelit pumpkin lanterns, spiders, bats and other supernatural images and entities. Hallowe'en is an enduring tradition that refuses to die, and here are three stories of the paranormal which allegedly took place in England on what is asserted to be the most ghostly night of the year...
The guard looked up at the full moon looming on the eastern horizon and inhaled some fresh air. He then casually scanned the skyline of the town, then looked down at the streets. He noticed the silhouettes of two girls chasing one another around the moonlit playground of a school about a hundred yards down the road. The girls had long hair and both looked roughly the same age; about sixteen or eighteen. Tony assumed they were sixth-formers messing about in the deserted playground.
Then they vanished as he watched.
Tony was so shocked by the sight of the vanishing double act, his jaw dropped and the cigarette fell into his cup of coffee. The guard continued staring at the playground to see if the figures would reappear, but they didn't. Tony felt uneasy and returned to the interior of the factory via a door in the roof. He had never believed in ghosts, but knew that he had just seen the ghosts of two schoolgirls; it had not been a trick of the light or some hallucination. The guard telephoned his old uncle, Stan Jones, a retired policeman, to tell him about the strange spectacle he'd just witnessed.
After he'd heard Tony's strange account, Stand asked his nephew: 'Haven't you read the news recently?'
Tony confessed that he only read the sports pages of the newspapers. 'Why Uncle Stan? What's that got to do with what I saw?'
Stan replied, 'It was in the papers about a week back, two sisters died in a car crash up in Bolton. They were only fifteen, and they both attended the school just down the road from where you are now.'
'You're kidding.' said Tony, feeling a cold chill all of a sudden.
Tony's Uncle Stan then made matters worse by relating a strange experience he'd had himself eleven years before - in the very warehouse Tony was guarding. Stan said, 'It was around 1965, and funnily enough I recall it was in October. In those days the old night-watchman used to let me in and I'd have a cuppa with him and a good natter. Anyway, on this October night, I turned up and the watchman poured me a cuppa tea and kindly offered me one of his sandwiches from his turning-out box. He then went to the toilet at the other end of the building. Now, I was never one for believing in ghosts and the supernatural and all that mumbo jumbo, but while the night-watchman was gone, something happened which played on my mind for years. Perhaps I shouldn't tell you. It could play on your mind too.'
Tony didn't know whether he wanted to hear the rest of his uncle's tale. If he didn't he knew he'd be wondering what his uncle had seen all night. 'Go one, I'm not scared Uncle Stan.' Tony said, watching the moon through the windows of the warehouse with an anxious look.
'Well,' continued Stan, 'just after the night-watchman went to the loo, a horrible, penetrating coldness filled the place. I could see my breath it was that cold all of a sudden. Then I got this really creepy feeling that there was some presence beside me.'
'How do you mean uncle?' Tony asked, nervously fiddling with the coiled phone flex.
Stan paused then said: 'It's hard to explain; it's like when people say they know when they're being watched. They can feel someone's eyes on them. It was like that. It became really tense in that place while the watchman was gone. And then I saw something. Sure you're not nervous?'
'Nah, I'm more curious than scared.' Tony said, putting on a false brave front.
'I saw these covered bodies lying in a row in the dark corner of the room. Three or four I think there were. Covered in white sheets. I was really baffled. The watchman came back and I looked at him and said; "What are those?" But they'd gone.'
'What did the watchman say? Did he see them?' Tony asked. He was getting goosebumps on his arms and neck as he spoke.
'The watchman didn't see the bodies, but he knew what I was talking about, because he said he'd seen the bodies a few times over the years.' Stan said.
'That's really weird.' Tony told him, and he was now sensing, or perhaps imagining - a presence.
'You know what the watchman told me?' Stan asked his trembling nephew.
'No, what uncle?'
'I thought he was having me on but your Auntie Hilda later confirmed it. The watchman said that a morgue used to stand on the site of the warehouse.' Stan said, and suddenly, the phoneline went dead.
Tony Baron felt the hairs on the nape of his neck standing up. He had the overwhelming feeling that something or someone was approaching from behind. Then he noticed the foul smell pervading the place. What's more, something icy touched the back of his head. The guard ran off as fast as his legs could carry him and with his heart pounding he unlocked the main door of the warehouse. He ran out into the street and didn't stop running until he had a stitch in his side. He decided enough was enough and intended to hand in his notice at the warehouse in the morning. As his uncle's house was nearer than home, Tony paid him a late visit and told him about the spooky atmosphere which had just been too much for him to take. Stan said something which sent a shiver down his nephew's spine. He said, 'As I was talking to you on the phone, the line went dead, so I waited. I thought something had happened to you. About thirty seconds later, a woman's voice said, "Tony's just run out of here." And she sounded as if she was mentally deranged because she started to laugh hysterically, then she banged the phone down. Who was she?'
'There was no one else on the premises.' Tony replied with a shiver.
A year later, Tony was in a pub, and he got talking to a middle-aged man who said he'd done a stint as a security guard in the warehouse where Tony had worked three years back. The man startled Tony by telling him that he had packed in his job at the Warrington warehouse because one night he had a cat nap, and when he woke up, a sinister-looking woman in a long white gown was standing over him, smiling. Her face was as white as a sheet of paper and her eyes were yellowish with dark rings around them. There was also a disgusting smell like an aroma of decomposing flesh present. Seconds later, the woman cackled and vanished, and the obnoxious odour quickly faded.
The identity of the phantom is a mystery, but it's said that she still walks the warehouse in the dead of night. Perhaps she has some earthly tie with the old morgue that once stood on the site of the warehouse in the 19th century...
Emma and Erika were quite excited at this magical prospect and asked Melissa how it was done. In a matter-of-fact manner she told them: 'You light two candles and place them on each side of you, then you look into a mirror, combing your hair with one hand and eating an apple at the same time. After a while you see your future husband looking over your left shoulder in the mirror. My mum did it when she was a girl and saw my dad's face.'
'Let's do it!' Emma exclaimed, enthusiastically.
'It's got to be at midnight exactly.' Melissa told her excited friend. The time was only 10 o'clock in the evening.
Emma went out the living room for a while, then returned with two scented candles, each mounted on twisted silver candlesticks. She also had a hairbrush taken from her aunt's bedroom. Emma positioned the candlesticks on opposite ends of the long mantelpiece over the flickering coal fire then gazed into the eyes of her reflection in the mirror situated over the fireplace. In a melodramatic voice Emma joked, 'Who will you marry Emma?' and started to laugh.
'Don't mess about with the Black Arts; it's dangerous.' Melissa warned her flippant friend.
At precisely midnight, the heavy curtains were drawn and the traditional Hallowe'en custom commenced. In the dark room lit only by two candles and the flickering flames in the grate, Emma solemnly stared at herself in the mirror. behind her to her left stood Melissa and Erika, holding on to each other's hands with electric excitement. They giggled at the sound of Emma's crunching into the apple, then watched the dim sparks of static electricity crackle through the girl's hair as she pulled the brush through it.
'Keep staring at the space over the left shoulder of your reflection. Concentrate on that space as you brush.' Melissa coached Emma, who was taking it all so serious.
Her friends behind her waited with baited breath, both yearning for something - anything - to happen.
And something did happen. Something which almost caused Emma to faint with shock.
A face came forward out of the darkness in the mirror and peered over the left shoulder of Emma's mirror image. It was a sinister, contorted, pallid face with reddish hair, snarling at her. Emma's natural reaction was to turn right, for she expected the terrifying disembodied face to be hovering over her right shoulder, but it wasn't there. It only existed in the mirror as a reflection.
A sudden whistling draught from nowhere blew out the candles on the mantelpiece and Erika let out a scream. She dashed off to turn on the light, but she couldn't locate the light switch, and in her panic she fell over a chair.
Melissa was rushing for the door by now, and she tripped over Erika who was lying across the floor. Emma yelled out in pain. A lump of orange hot incandescent coal had jumped out of the fireplace on its own and bounced off her arm. More and more fragments of glowing coal flew out of the fire and showered the room, until Emma raced to the light switch and flicked it on. Scattered about the room were smouldering lumps of coal sizzling on the carpet and furniture. As Melissa and Erika fled from the living room and into the hall, Emma bravely grabbed a pair of tongs hanging on a stand on the hearth and used them to pick up the dangerous chunks of coal. She threw them back into the grate, and as soon as she saw that nothing was on fire, she hurried out of the house and stayed at Erika's place for the remainder of that night.
The girls often talked about the scary Hallowe'en incident over the next five years - especially when October 31 loomed - and none of them ever meddled with the occult again.
Then, in 1984, Emma met a man named Roy. She really regarded him as the ideal man of her dreams. He was tall, blond, and had a pair of expressive sky-blue eyes. Emma introduced Roy to all her friends and by the summer of 1985 she was engaged to him and living in his flat. She really looked forward to marrying Roy.
But Roy gradually underwent a drastic change of personality, and Emma started to see a repulsive side of her fiance she never knew existed. He often came home drunk and ordered Emma to make him something for supper. His behaviour deteriorated and he ended up throwing a coffee table at his girl. Emma left him for a week and stayed at her sister's house, but Roy found out and continually phoned her, begging and pleading for her to come back. Emma did in the hope that Roy would clean up his act, but his drunken antics continued. Then, one night, as Roy was lying beside Emma in bed, she noticed that the hair at the crown of his head had red roots. She thought Roy was a natural blond, but he confessed that he hated his red hair and had gotten his sister to dye it blond for the last two years. Emma told him it didn't matter what colour his hair was, and she convinced him to let his normal colour return. Roy did this, and six months later, Emma got the shock of her life when she had an argument with her boyfriend one night. She was telling him to pack in the booze when he suddenly turned violent and slapped her across the face. He then grabbed a large knife from the kitchen and threatened he'd 'shut her up for good'. He snarled and screwed up his eyes with unbridled hatred, and suddenly, Emma remembered seeing that same face five years previously in the mirror on that eventful Hallowe'en night. The girl was so scared at the terrifying feeling of deja vu, she fled the house and went back to her parents. The police were called out and Roy was arrested. Emma vowed she would never return to her violent ex-boyfriend and married someone else years later. To this day, Emma believes that spirits warned her of Roy on that memorable Hallowe'en night and probably saved her life as a result.
'Granddad's got a Sooty puppet.' Brandon said, and he grinned ear to ear, but became puzzled at his mother's grim response.
Kirsty's father had died seven years before, two years before Brandon's birth, and her father-in-law had gone to his grave ten years ago. So Kirsty assumed little Brandon was just talking about an imaginary character, as the boy had a vivid imagination and often said Mickey Mouse or Spiderman was upstairs in his room playing with his toys.
But when Kirsty went up to her son's room she was shocked to see an old yellow glove puppet of 'Sooty', the character she used to watch on TV in the 1970s when she was a kid. Then, with a shudder, Kirsty recalled that her father had bought her an identical Sooty glove puppet one Christmas in her childhood. The only other explanation was that Brandon had taken the puppet off a friend, but she doubted that explanation. So, Kirsty quizzed her son about the puppet, and he told her that an old man had appeared in his room earlier that day. Brandon said that the man called him 'chuck'.
'Chuck' was the name Kirsty's dad called her when she was small.
Brandon then excitedly said, 'Oh yeah mum. He said you should hang apples up for me.'
Brandon's comments really jogged his mum's memories. When she was a child, her father and mother always tied cotton threads to the stalks of apples and hung them in the doorway. Kirsty and her brothers would then try to bite the apples with their hands behind their back.
Inspired by these nostalgic thoughts, Kirsty took Brandon to the greengrocer's and bought the apples and a big pumpkin to hollow out and cut a face into. That evening, Kirsty and her husband hung some of the apples from threads and challenged Brandon to seize them with his mouth without using his hands. Then Brandon's dad put four or five apples in his son's inflatable paddle pool and filled it with water. He and Brandon competed with Kirsty to clench the apples by mouth without using their hands. Brandon really enjoyed the customs of Hallowe'en, and his dad wanted to tell him a ghost story before bed, but Kirsty said he'd have nightmares, so Brandon was put to bed after Kirsty read him an innocuous "Mister Men" story.
At around 1 am, Kirsty picked up a solitary green apple floating in the paddle pool in the garden and took it into the kitchen. She noticed something embedded in it. Kirsty's husband saw it too and he said it was dangerous putting coins in the apple which Brandon could choke on. Kirsty said she hadn't put a coin in the apple, and she prised out the coin in question. It was a real blast from the past. The coin was one Kirsty and her husband had not seen since they were kids. It was a 'threepenny bit' - an old brass-coloured pre-decimal coin equivalent to three pence. The two adults were at a loss to explain who had put the antiquated coin in the apple, but Kirsty thought her dad was the culprit, as he always hid a threepenny coin in an apple for her on 'Duck-Apple Night'. Of course, Kirsty didn't dare tell her husband about her suspicions in case he thought she was crazy.
About a month later, Kirsty was leafing through her old family photo album one rainy afternoon in a reminiscent mood, when Brandon came over and studied the old photographs. The boy's face suddenly lit up and he pointed to an untitled picture of Kirsty's father and said, 'That's Granddad! He comes to my room!'
From Tom Slemen's book Haunted Cheshire
Published by the Bluecoat Press, Liverpool, England.
