Ian Jarvis's Blog, page 3

BORLEY RECTORY

Borley Rectory, the Most Haunted House in England is a 2017 film by Ashley Thorpe starring Jonathan Rigby and Reece Shearsmith, a wonderful labour of love that took six years to complete.Ashley is the man behind Carrion Films, but don’t be misled into thinking Carrion Matron and Carrion up the Khyber – his movies are a little different. If you have any interest in the legend of Borley, the famous ghost saga of spectral nuns, dark creaking corridors and the wonderful Harry Price, you’re in for a real treat.I saw Borley Rectory at the Manchester Grimmfest premiere, and Ashley has managed to capture the look and atmosphere perfectly. The film oozes 1930s realism and you feel as if you’re actually there in the old building on a dark stormy night with Price and the Foysters. The thing is, Borley Rectory isn’t just a ghost story, it’s THE great British ghost story and has often been described as the Mount Everest of hauntings.There are certain things which generate huge passions in some people – the Titanic for example, where enthusiasts can pretty much name all the passengers. The Whitechapel Ripper is another, the much-debated creature in Loch Ness, and the Great Train Robbery. I knew someone who was so obsessed with the latter, he drove to Bridego Bridge one night and chiselled out a brick which he proudly cemented in his conservatory with a plaque.I can’t really comment on the absurdity of this as, for several years,  a red Borley brick sat on my shelf, dug up from the rectory site in 1978 when they lay just inches beneath the grass and weeds. Yes, Borley Rectory most definitely features on this list of passions, and Ashley Thorpe, like myself, has definitely been bitten by the Borley bug. He first came across the story as a child in the Osbourne Book of Ghosts and his lifelong interest has led to this amazing film.Borley is an isolated hamlet on the borders of Suffolk and Essex, just an ancient church and a handful of houses in a picturesque rural setting. Opposite the church, on the quiet lane that seems almost devoid of traffic, stands the Rectory Cottage and immediately behind this was the famous rectory. Constructed in 1863 by the reverend Henry Bull, many supernatural happenings were experienced there, including the famous sighting of a ghost nun in bright daylight by the Bull daughters. The real story of the Borley hauntings, however, dates from Harry Price’s arrival in 1929 to the building’s demolition in 1944.I’ve always felt the story exudes a sublime Agatha Christie aura of tweed suits, pipes and croquet picnics on the lawn, and Ashley Thorpe captures this bygone atmosphere perfectly. Part documentary and part drama, Borley Rectory is shot in stunning black and white and could easily have been filmed in the thirties. It feels like actual footage from back then, where Alastair Sim may show up at any moment playing Price.We don’t have Alastair, but we do have the wonderful Jonathan Rigby, excellent in his portrayal of this psychic researcher. Price was something of a celebrity, the top paranormal investigator of the day and very much a showman. Reece Shearsmith is also excellent as V.C. Wall, the Daily Mirror reporter who introduced Price to the rectory.The movie has been classed as animation, but you can forget about Toy Story and Dumbo. This is the sort of ‘animation’ used in Sin City and 300. Every contemporary photograph of the rectory exterior, rooms, passages and surrounding gardens have been fed into Ashley’s computer, rendered as 3D and the living (green screen) actors inserted. You can’t tell - it really does look as if these people are walking around inside Borley Rectory in the 1930s and I really can’t imagine a better or creepier way to tell this ghost story.Ashley even used a 3D model to work out exactly where the windows and other illumination sources would be to correctly light his people. The rectory was demolished after a mysterious fire in 1944, but here it stands once again, brought back to eerie life.One memorable scene reconstructs Price and Wall’s night vigil in the old summerhouse watching the nun as she glides along the misty ‘nun’s walk’.We meet the Bull family, along with the Smiths, the first rectory incumbents, Lionel and Marianne Foyster, and the Glanvilles. After Price, I’ve always considered Marianne to be the ‘star’ of the Borley story and here she is, brought to (very attractive) life by Annabel Bates. We see her finding the famous ‘Light, mass, prayers’ messages scribbled on the dark passage walls, and hear her enjoying a break from the ghosts with Frank Pearless, the friendly handyman and lodger.If you’ve ever been intrigued by this famous haunting, watch Borley Rectory, the Most Haunted House in England and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.Where Ashley Thorpe first discovered Borley in the Osbourne Book of Ghosts, my first encounter was seedier, but still pivotal. A magazine called Witchcraft was published in the UK in the mid-seventies, which contained ‘glamour’ shoots of naked ladies on altars surrounded by black candles and muscular men wearing goat heads. The magazine was given to me by a school friend, but I was more interested in one of the articles.Where Playboy mixes the nudity with commentaries on fast cars, Witchcraft had a few pieces on the supernatural and this particular issue featured Borley. It mostly covered the sensational aspects of the story – headless coachmen and bricked-up nuns – but after reading it, I immediately borrowed Harry Price’s the End of Borley Rectory from the library. Shortly after this, in 1975, came the Ghost Hunters television documentary with Geoffrey Croom-Hollingsworth and Roy Potter. Geoffrey ran the Enfield Paranormal Research Group, he’d seen the nun and he had amazing tapes of spectral footsteps and a phantom sigh, recorded on one of his overnight vigils inside Borley church.I bought his cassette from a Leeds occult shop with the (very frightening) sigh and first visited Borley in 1977.  The lady who lived next door in Borley Place always locked the church at sunset, but would allow you to leave microphones inside with the leads hidden under the mat in the porch. After an evening in one of the Long Melford pubs, you could then plug in your recorder and hopefully pick up ghostly whispering, footsteps and rapping (knocks on wood, not black ghosts with attitude singing). I only ever recorded silence.On my second visit to the churchyard and rectory site I met Geoffrey Croom-Hollingsworth who had brought a small party of ‘researchers’ who mostly seemed to be giggling girls.On another visit in 84 I met the American ‘demonologists’ Ed and Lorraine Warren. This is the pair who investigated Amityville and the Annabelle doll, the star of recent horror films. They arrived late in the afternoon on a coach – not the spectral horse-drawn coach seen galloping through the hamlet by many witnesses, but an air-conditioned 52 seater. They were leading a tour group of Americans on a paranormal journey of the British Isles, they’d visited various haunted hot spots, such as the Edinburgh Vaults and York’s Treasury House, and Borley was the much anticipated highlight.After the rectory was demolished, the spirits supposedly moved over the road to the 800 year old church and I joined the tour group as they wandered quietly and excitedly around the building hoping for glimpses of phenomena. This was back when the church wasn't permanently locked, the porch fitted with a metal security gate, and before visitors were actively deterred.Lorraine and I talked at length about her interest in Borley and how on a previous visit she’d witnessed an ‘apport’, a rare supernatural event where an object literally appears out of thin air. In this case it had been an old pre-decimal penny that fell to the floor in front of them near the altar, an obvious sign from Harry Price, she claimed. Price wrote books about the Borley hauntings, Lorraine had spoken to him psychically on several occasions and the pair were, more or less, on first name terms.As we were chatting, one of her group, the young man pictured above, suddenly spotted an old English halfpenny on the aisle carpet. Everyone agreed it hadn’t been there moments before, and picking it up, Lorraine realised it was another apport from Harry. If proof were needed, it was right there in the date on the coin – 1946, the year Price published the End of Borley Rectory, his second book on this place.The halfpenny was a physical message from Harry, said Lorraine, to let us know he was there with us. Incredible as this was, I couldn't help wondering why he didn't send a coin dated 1940, the year of his first (and more famous) rectory book, the Most Haunted House in England, or 1881, the year of his birth, or perhaps more pertinent, 1948, the year of his death. As it turned out, this was pointless speculation, as Lorraine held the coin tightly and felt Harry's definite presence in the church with us. That and an overwhelming sensation of peace.The villagers don’t exactly welcome visitors these days and it’s hard to blame them. Back in the late seventies and early eighties the place often resembled a circus on Friday and Saturday nights, with drunken youths from the nearby Long Melford and Sudbury driving over to harass the various bunches of ghost hunters and overnight investigators that were always present. I often wished I could have experienced Borley in its ghostly heyday and now I, and you, can with Ashley Thorpe’s Borley Rectory, the Most Haunted House in England.

I WOULDN'T BE SEEN DEAD WEARING THAT.

I watched one of those awful ghost programmes recently, those shows bought cheaply from the USA and shown on obscure Freeview channels – When Ghosts Attack, Paranormal Nightmares, Ghost Adventures, I Shagged a Ghost, etc – I don’t recall which one. In a series of dramatic reconstructions, with actors and extremely ominous music, it showed how a child named Billy often passed the creepy old house at the end of his street.He noticed another young kid sitting on the porch looking sad, he befriended him and they played together every day for a couple of weeks. This enigmatic kid, Sam, was pale with dark patches around the eyes, he couldn’t touch offered objects like footballs and chewing gum, and after several visits Billy discovered what every viewer (apart from morons) had guessed from the start. Yes, Sam was a ghost.The programme then cut to their resident ‘psychic expert’ who explained how the child must have died in the house many years before and he was lonely. No one from the show bothered to check the history of the house and ascertain if this was in fact the case and if a dark-haired white kid named Sam had lived there.Things then got much spookier. The incident with Sam occurred decades ago and Billy is now a middle-aged man. He told us about last year, when he was approached by a friendly stranger as he walked across a Costco car park. This man chatted with him about the weather for a few seconds before incredibly vanishing into thin air. Once again the programme cut to their ‘psychic expert’ who explained how this will have been the dead Sam from his childhood who was now also grown up.Again, no one questioned this staggering statement or asked how much the psychic was being paid to spout such utter shit.But the weirdest thing about all this was the ghost’s clothing. When Billy first met the spirit kid, he didn’t sense anything was wrong. According to the psychic, Sam had died many years before, yet he wore the current fashion of that year and, apart from his pallid complexion, he didn’t look out of place. Years later, the grown-up dead Sam had changed into adult clothes which, again, were of the current times. This was, presumably, after several changes in the intervening years to accommodate his ghost body as it grew. He now also sported a hipster beard, which proves that not only are ghosts fashionable, they also grow hair and need to shave. For some reason, the psychic didn’t cover this.So leaving aside these abysmal American programmes, and one or two British examples, what is it with ghosts and clothing?Paranormal investigators are convinced of the existence of ‘stone tape’ ghosts, who haunt certain sites, almost as if the stone walls have absorbed tragic episodes from the past and are replaying them. These apparitions perform the same motions in a sort of loop, like execution victims walking the passages of Hampton Court, or the famous Roman soldiers passing through the cellar of the Treasury House in York. These ghosts are clothed in period costume and, traditionally, spirits in older sightings seem to wear whatever they died in.You hear old stories of Victorian brides waiting at the altar who discover their husbands have been murdered by a jealous suitor. They run from the church in hysterics and throw themselves into a river. Whenever these dead girls are seen after that, it’s invariably in their wedding dress. These ghosts never get changed into anything else.During the two wars, there was a common ghost story that often happened to a friend of a friend. Many people had sons and brothers fighting overseas and they'd receive an unexpected visit from them in their homes. Naturally they'd be quite shocked to see their loved one who was supposedly posted abroad, but these young men would smile reassuringly before eerily vanishing. Days later, a telegram would arrive that sadly explained their loved one was dead AND they’d died at the exact moment they appeared in the house. These ghosts were always in uniform, because that’s what they were wearing at the moment of death.Things have changed since then and modern ghosts are different. How many people do we know who believe in the reality of spirits because their grandfather, grandmother, father or mother visited them shortly after the funeral. Granny appeared at the foot of the bed (no, they were definitely awake) and said: cheer up, because she was okay, her pain had gone, and she was in a better place.This is where it all gets a bit peculiar. These days, most people die in bed, usually a hospital or hospice bed, where they’ll almost certainly be wearing pyjamas, a nightie, or standard hospital gown. When they appear to us, they should look like the apparition in the movie It Follows, but this is never the case.Ask anyone how their ghost grandmother was dressed when she appeared in the middle of the night, and it will be that memorable outfit from last Christmas, or that lovely blue cardigan she always liked. Something nice, that you’d probably see them wearing if you weren't awake, but actually asleep and dreaming about them.Do dead people have access to some bizarre spirit wardrobe where they can change from their hospital bed attire into something more suitable? If so, why didn’t ghosts bother to use it in the past? Victorian spirits often appeared in their grave shroud, which must have been a little scary for relatives, and this is where we get the classic description of a ghost draped in a white sheet.Do shirts, dresses and shoes have some spirit make-up which allows them to exist on a different plane and be worn by ghosts? Other inanimate objects pose similar questions. People talk of seeing a ghostly coach and horses; there’s a famous example that passes the site of Borley Rectory in Suffolk. Dead horses may have spirits which we can see, but the coach itself?There are other stories of ghost cars, ghost trains and ghost aircraft – a famous airplane flies over Derbyshire near Ladybower reservoir. The stone tape theory is redundant here, as the open air above us has no way of absorbing past events. This must mean the plane had a spirit that existed after, er its death.Some experts, if there is such a thing in the world of the paranormal, say ghosts can appear wearing anything they wish – they sort of project the clothing onto their bodies like Mystique in the X-Men. This is a great idea and it makes you wonder why they don’t make more use of the power.‘My dead granddad always liked a laugh. He’s appeared at the foot of my bed several times and each time he’s dressed as a different member of the Village People.’Ooh, put something on. You'll catch your death.

PUT SOME CLOTHES ON. YOU'LL CATCH YOUR DEATH.

I watched one of those awful American ghost shows recently, the ones bought from the USA and shown on obscure Freeview channels – When Ghosts Attack, Paranormal Nightmares, Ghost Adventures, I Slept With a Ghost, etc – I don’t recall which. In a series of dramatic reconstructions, with actors and extremely ominous music, it showed how a child named Billy often passed the creepy old house at the end of his street. He noticed another young kid sitting on the porch looking sad, he befriended him and they played together every day for a couple of weeks. This enigmatic kid, Sam, was pale with dark patches around the eyes, he couldn’t touch offered objects like footballs and chewing gum, and after several visits Billy discovered what every viewer (apart from morons) had guessed from the start – Sam was a ghost.The programme then cut to their resident ‘psychic expert’ who explained how the child must have died in the house many years before and he was lonely. No one bothered to check the history of the house and ascertain if this was in fact the case and if a kid named Sam had lived there.Things then got spookier. The incident with Sam occurred decades ago and Billy is now a middle-aged man. He told us about last year, when he was approached by a friendly man as he walked across a Costco car park. This man chatted with him for a few seconds before incredibly vanishing into thin air. Once again the programme cut to their ‘psychic expert’ who explained how this will have been Sam from his childhood who was now also grown up. Again, no one questioned this staggering statement or asked how much the psychic was being paid to spout such utter shit.But the weirdest thing about all this was the ghost’s clothing. When Billy first met the ghost kid, he didn’t sense anything was wrong. Despite having died many years before (according to the psychic), Sam wore the current fashion of that year and, apart from his pallid complexion, he didn’t look out of place. Years later, the grown-up Sam had changed into adult clothes, again of the current times, presumably after several changes in the intervening years to accommodate his growing dead body. He now also sported a hipster beard, which proves that not only are ghosts fashionable, they also grow hair and need to shave. The psychic didn’t cover this.So leaving aside these abysmal American programmes, and one or two British examples, what is it with ghosts and clothing?Paranormal investigators are convinced of the existence of ‘stone tape’ ghosts, who haunt certain sites, almost as if the stone walls have absorbed tragic episodes from the past and are replaying them. These apparitions perform the same motions in a sort of loop, like execution victims walking the passages of Hampton Court, or the famous Roman soldiers passing through the cellar of the Treasury House in York. These ghosts are clothed in period costume and, traditionally, spirits in older sightings seem to wear whatever they died in. You hear old stories of Victorian brides waiting at the altar who discover their husbands have been murdered by a jealous suitor. They run from the church in hysterics and throw themselves into a river. Whenever these dead girls are seen after that, it’s invariably in their wedding dress. These ghosts never get changed into anything else.During the two wars, there was a common ghost story that often happened to a friend of a friend. Many people had sons and brothers fighting overseas and they would receive an unexpected visit from them in their homes. Naturally they were quite shocked to see their loved one who was supposedly posted abroad, but these young men would smile reassuringly before eerily vanishing. Days later, a telegram would arrive sadly explaining they were dead AND they’d died at the exact moment they appeared in the house. These ghosts were always in uniform, because that’s what they were wearing at the moment of death.Things have changed since then and modern ghosts are different. How many people do we know who believe in the reality of spirits because their grandfather, grandmother, father or mother visited them shortly after the funeral. They appeared at the foot of the bed (no, they were definitely awake) and said they were okay, their pain had gone, they were in a better place and we were not to grieve.This is where it all gets a bit peculiar. These days, most people die in bed, usually a hospital or hospice bed, where they’ll almost certainly be wearing pyjamas, a nightie or standard hospital gown. When they appear to us, they should look like the first apparition in the movie It Follows, but this is never the case.Ask anyone how their ghost grandmother was dressed, and it will be that memorable outfit from last Christmas, or that lovely blue cardigan she always liked. Something nice, that you’d probably see them wearing if you were dreaming about them.Do dead people have access to some bizarre spirit wardrobe where they can change from their hospital bed attire into something more suitable? If so, why didn’t ghosts bother to use it in the past? Victorian spirits often appeared in their grave shroud, which must have been a little scary for relatives, and this is where we get the classic description of a ghost draped in a white sheet.Do shirts, dresses and shoes have some spirit make-up which allows them to exist on a different plane and be worn by ghosts? Other inanimate objects pose similar questions. People talk of seeing a ghostly coach and horses; there’s a famous example that passes the site of Borley Rectory in Suffolk. Dead horses may have spirits which we can see, but the coach itself? There are other stories of ghost cars, ghost trains and ghost aircraft – a famous one flies over Derbyshire near Ladybower reservoir. The stone tape theory is redundant here, as the open air above us has no way of absorbing past events. This must mean the old airplane had a spirit that exists after, er its death.Some experts, if there is such a thing in the world of the paranormal, say ghosts can appear wearing anything they wish – they sort of project the clothing onto their bodies like Mystique in the X-Men. This is a great idea and it makes you wonder why they don’t make more use of the power.‘My dead granddad always liked a laugh. He’s appeared at the foot of my bed several times and each time he’s dressed as a different member of the Village People.’

‘THE FUTURE IS NOT SET’ – SARAH CONNOR, CIRCA 1991, OR 1984, OR POSSIBLY 2015.

Standing by the harbour in the pretty Yorkshire fishing town of Whitby you’ll find a wooden shack owned by a gypsy named Lee Ester Alita Lee. If you pay her, she’ll look at your hand and tell you all about your future. That’s right, she’s able to see things that have yet to happen. I’ve spoken to this lady she’s very nice and friendly, but can she actually see things that will happen in the future? Science, logic and reason might say no, but various famous people seem to think she can, mostly the cast of the old northern television shows Heartbeat and the Royal. She has photographs of the actors from these programmes having their palms read and some look aghast.‘You’re telling me they’re going to cancel Heartbeat after running for eighteen years? Oh, shit!’.Back in 1990 a friend of mine started work with the British Antarctic Survey. One week before he flew to Uruguay to catch his ship down to the ice shelf, I was holidaying with him and a few other people in Whitby and, at my insistence, he went for a reading in the famous white shack. The gypsy saw various scenarios in his future and cryptically told him: ‘You’ll never be rich, but you’ll never, ever be poor’, and ‘I see a young lady in the near future with a letter E in her name, or possibly a letter S’.The peculiar thing was her psychic senses never picked up on the fact that this man’s next three years would be spent in constant snow and ice at the very bottom of the planet, building a base at the South Pole in temperatures of minus sixty-five.Lee Ester Alita Lee's psychic palm reading business features briefly in the next Bernie Quist mystery Claymation, where much of the story takes place in Whitby and the nearby town of Scarborough, and it got me thinking. I don’t know if this gypsy lady can see into the future or not, but if she CAN, you have to wonder why she’s sitting in a seaside hut, squandering her incredible gift on giggling Yorkshire tourists, when she could be working nationwide with the British police and the security services in an effort to pinpoint the next terror attacks.The authorities have ‘watch lists’ of suspects, with lots of photographs and information, which could be scrutinised with her powers and any future bomb plots could hopefully be thwarted. The biggest hurdle would already have been crossed in that she’d have names to work with. Psychics are traditionally poor with names. Their sensory powers only pick up letters and, when spirits speak to them, they also only supply odd letters to identify themselves. The medium then passes these letters to the bereaved clients and they have to fill in the blanks…‘I have someone here with a letter N in their name.’‘Oh, right. My husband was called Mark.’‘Wait a moment. It’s M, not N, and yes, it IS Mark. Yes, he’s here.’This isn’t in any way the fault of the mediums. For some weird reason, the spirits won’t give their identity outright, but instead, insist upon drip-feeding their name as letters like this. Why on earth they do this has never been understood. If these people had no interest in word puzzles when they were alive, why do they start pissing about with them when they’re dead?Things are slightly different when the medium isn’t operating one to one with a bereaved client, but contacting the dead on stage with a hall full of people, all hoping for a message. The spirits will then occasionally give their first name. They’ll say: ‘it’s David’, but although this seems fairly useless without a surname, various people will respond and raise their hands and the medium will pick one.‘It’s you. Yes, this is YOUR David.’If only the spirits would give a surname and mention who they wished to contact, it would be so much more helpful. How difficult would it be to say:‘This is David Jessops for Amy Jessops sitting at the front there in the blue coat.’'The lady I want to speak to is Janet Matthews in the fawn raincoat by the door'.This would save the medium having to vaguely indicate to half the auditorium, saying:‘I have a John here for someone in this right half of the room, or possibly the left.’It’s extremely annoying and can make the medium look like a fake who’s just fishing.Once this initial name hurdle is over, the spirits start chatting and the nonsense with the letter game never reappears. They’ll make vague references to pets, a favourite song, and a faulty vehicle or household appliance. The medium always sees someone in a uniform too.  It’s pointless asking what kind of uniform it is, as this will cause the vision to become indistinct, and the best practise is for the bereaved relatives to keep things flowing by telling the medium what uniform it is…‘Uniform? Oh, that’ll be our Terry. He was once in the army’.‘Uniform? Uniform? I don’t think I know… Oh, it must be our Shirley. She wears a kind of uniform in the supermarket where she works.’The main thing is, once the spirits are over the initial name hurdle, everything seems to flow just fine…‘He’s telling me how he loved his holidays on the coast. Where was it again?’‘Blackpool.’‘That’s right, Blackpool. He says you both loved it there, but oooh, do you remember that time it rained and how wet you both got? And he did like his fish and chips, didn’t he? He’s telling me how he always asked for scraps and told them to put plenty of salt and vinegar on. You remember that, don’t you? He says you had a favourite song that always reminded you both of Blackpool. He’s saying it was… It was…’‘Smile, by Lily Allen.’‘That’s right, Smile. And he’s saying that’s what you should always do when you hear it. You should smile and think of him.’Once the spirits start, it’s difficult to shut them up, but first they need to start and overcome that initial fumbling name business. This wouldn’t be a problem with the police watch list of names and Lee Ester Alita Lee could concentrate on them and get on with sensing their future and whatever terrorism shenanigans they were about to get up to.Now if this woman (and other mediums like her) CAN see the future, we could make Britain a far safer place by having her work with MI5. If she CAN’T, then why is she allowed to take money by openly operating a fraudulent service? She’s been trading in Whitby for decades and has never once been questioned by the trading standards people as to her blatantly advertised supernatural claims.If I was to set up a stall next door selling cures for cancer (£25 a bottle. It looks like water, it tastes like water, but if you have faith when you drink it, your illness will vanish) I wonder how many days (or even hours) I’d be trading before the authorities closed me down and, very probably, prosecuted me.I doubt it would do much good to point out that the woman next door was making lots of cash from a similar bizarre enterprise.Who knows? To finish, here's a young lady finding out how wonderful her future will be from a medium who's been trading for a great many years...

'PARANORMAL ADVENTURES IN YORK? ELEMENTARY.'

The City of York and a Supernatural SherlockYork has many claims to fame, one of the lesser known being that it has more ghosts and supposedly verified hauntings than any other British city. That being the case, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to discover that it also has more “ghost walks” too, with over a dozen different tours guiding punters through the murky alleys and snickelways.Invariably led by budding actors in cloaks or period costume, you’ll find the Ghost Walk, the Original Ghost Walk, the Ghost Hunt, the Real Ghost Walk, the Ghost Trail and many others taking tourist groups around every night of the year. A Ghost Cruise sails along the River Ouse through the city centre, and York even has a Ghost Bus, where passengers are driven around the evening streets in an old double decker and told frightening stories.These various operations have no love for one another and the guides often glare at each other as rival groups pass in the narrow cobbled streets. One night the simmering dislike may erupt into something resembling the Glasgow ice cream wars of the 1980s.When I was planning a series of humorous novels about a private investigator (or consultant detective) resembling Sherlock Holmes, I chose York as the setting for two reasons. Firstly, as mentioned above, the small city openly embraces its paranormal side and my Bernard Quist books would draw on that. There’s a good reason why the Hound of the Baskervilles has always been the most famous and best loved of the Conan Doyle stories. Although it’s a truly fantastic novel, a good deal of its popularity stems from the supernatural element. Many readers love the supernatural, and here they get their favourite detective involved in a seemingly paranormal mystery of ancient legends, misty moorlands and a terrifying spectral beast.A similar atmosphere permeates the Bernard Quist novels, but where the Baskerville hound turns out to be a real dog, similar to those huge things owned by estate money lenders and drug dealers, the eerie situations Quist and his assistant face are genuinely supernatural.The second reason for choosing York should be obvious - this is such an amazing place and perfect for detective mysteries. Few writers have used the city as a backdrop and it’s difficult to understand why. York rivals Prague, Vienna and Saltsburg for architectural beauty and medieval splendour. Every stroll through the cobbled streets and snickleways is a stroll through history, with each turn bringing you face-to-face with Elizabethan fortifications, Tudor buildings and ancient taverns. I’ve attempted to use the city as an actual character in the same way that the Morse and Rebus novels breathe life into Oxford and Edinburgh.Most readers will be aware of the Shambles, the Minster and the circuit of rampart walls and barbican gates that encircle the centre. Yorkshire readers may also be familiar with other locations in the stories such as the Golden Fleece (York’s most haunted inn), and the King’s Arms by the river, the pub which famously floods at the first glimpse of rain cloud. York was also chosen as the setting because it’s a short drive up the road from me which makes it very easy to check the various locations to ensure ideas and plot points work.The Yorkshire Wolds to the east of the city also feature in the first book, Cat Flap. This area isn’t as famous as the Dales and the North York Moors and must feel like their poor relation – John F Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and that other Chappaquiddick brother who didn’t shine politically or get to sleep with Marilyn Monroe. I felt it was time the Wolds had a bit of a shout out, even if only to feature as a grisly murder scene.I decided to try a new take on Sherlock Holmes with the character Bernie Quist – a different and original approach, and hopefully both urban fantasy readers and Holmes fans will enjoy the idea. Quist, his assistant and the other protagonists are likable and quirky, and the stories are humorous without being outright comedy. Quist operates from Baker Avenue, his eccentric personality and deductive methods resemble Conan Doyle’s sleuth and his assistant is named Watson, although this Watson is a black youth from a notorious housing estate and he’s definitely no doctor. The mismatched duo take on bizarre cases which invariably lead to the realms of the supernatural, a shadowy world Quist is all too familiar with. Reclusive and very much a loner, he has a dark secret which eventually comes to light in the first novel Cat Flap.My original idea was to base the character on Basil Rathbone. Before I read Conan Doyle’s books, I grew up with the old films starring Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Jeremy Brett was the best and most accurate portrayal of Holmes, but my heart will always belong to this earlier pair, although why the genius detective would have Bruce’s character assisting him is a bigger mystery than any of his cases. Bumbling and dafter than a proverbial brush, Bruce’s Watson would make a wonderful friend, but he wouldn’t be your first choice as an ally when facing Moriarty or hell hounds. In making Quist modern, he lost the Rathbone similarities and, don’t ask why, but I often had Hugh Grant in mind when visualising his looks and eloquent voice.I’ve included many tributes and nods to the Conan Doyle stories and hardcore fans should enjoy spotting these. Watson, for example, lives on the infamous Grimpen housing estate – named after the Grimpen Mire in Hound of the Baskervilles and described there as one of the most awful places in Britain. Because of the modern setting, my main task was to keep this a million miles away from the feel of the Sherlock television series. With the humour, the supernatural slant and various other factors, I’ve managed that.I wanted quirky and surreal titles to reflect the content. Cat Flap refers to the ‘flaps’ surrounding the numerous sightings of big cats in the British countryside – the pumas and black panthers, such as the Beast of Bodmin Moor.The Music of Sound is an obvious play on the famous story of nuns and Nazis, but features neither. Here Quist is involved with a singing superstar, a female mercenary soldier named Adler, and Laurel and Hardy.The third book does have Nazis in the form of white supremacists and their new political party – White Rose, a Yorkshire nationalist group. Quist’s missing person investigation involves these dubious people, a wealthy family of drug dealing criminals and a dark power that is worse than either.The books are published by MX, the largest publisher of Sherlock Holmes in the world and, assuming Quist and Watson survive the dangers in the first three, there will be many more. Who knows? If all goes well, there may be Bernie Quist location tours one day in York, with rival guides glaring at each other.‘Don’t believe what that twat tells you. Quist’s detective agency is supposedly at the end of this street, not that one.’

CRY WOLF, OR CRY ACADEMIC EXPLANATION

Scientific insight into the Yorkshire Werewolf.This time last year, frightened villagers around Beverley began reporting sightings of an eight-foot tall werewolf in the Yorkshire countryside. They’re still occasionally spotting the creature, but the papers have now moved on to more newsworthy stories like Beckham’s new hairstyle. Most of the sightings are near the Barmston Drain, a rural man-made water channel near the town. Some locals believe they’re seeing a supernatural beast called 'Old Stinker' and witnesses claim the creature looks: ‘half-man half-wolf, a bit like that monster out of American Werewolf in London.’One woman near the drain said: 'It was stood upright one moment. The next it was down on all fours running like a dog. I was terrified. It vaulted 30ft over to the other side and vanished up the embankment and over a wall into some allotments.'  She eloquently added: ‘it had the qualities of both human and wolf.’A couple said they saw ‘something tall and hairy eating a German Shepherd dog next to the channel. It jumped over an 8ft-high fence, with the animal in its mouth’. Presumably a very large mouth.Another woman who was walking her dog by the drain spotted something 'half dog half human'. She said her pet refused to go any further along the path they were walking.A further witness said the beast ‘was on all fours, and then ran away on hind legs with a large animal in its mouth’. Other sightings followed - a woman in a car with friends saw a beast with a human head in the road in the village of Halsham. It started walking towards them on two legs.Locals armed themselves with burning torches, pitchforks and digital cameras and went on a hunt during the full moon to prove their scary sightings were real. Unfortunately, no one managed to get any pictures. Local Labour councillor Steve Wilson said he was willing to offer his services to the effort, but didn’t elaborate on what this meant. Stripping him naked and staking him out like a goat might have attracted the beast close to the cameras.Folklore experts were fairly certain the creature was Old Stinker. Named for his foul breath, this huge red-eyed werewolf roams the Yorkshire Wolds, an area north of the Barmston Drain.The Yorkshire Wolds feature as the scene of a murder in my humorous detective novel Cat Flap.Compared to the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors, few tourists have heard of these chalk hills. Unlike the other two celebrated regions, they were never awarded National Park status or classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. If landscapes were in any way sentient, the Wolds would feel like the poor relation. The forlorn member of the trio, reminiscent of that other Kennedy brother – JFK, Bobby, and the Chappaquiddick one who never shone politically or got to sleep with Marilyn Monroe.Old Stinker has stalked the Wolds Newton Triangle for centuries, an area known for mysterious activity. Many tales have circulated of zombies, ghosts, the Old Stinker werewolf and other paranormal activity in the area.  ‘Supernatural experts’ believe the werewolf has outgrown this triangular haunt and has moved to the Barmston Drain for some reason - possibly something to do with ley lines or ‘energy’.Terrifying picture drawn by a witness.Picture drawn by a (much earlier) witness.Doctor Sam George has a different opinion of the Yorkshire Werewolf. The lovely Dr George was behind the UK’s recent International Werewolf Conference at the University of Hertfordshire. She believes our collective guilt about wiping out the native wolf population could be behind the sightings.'The location of the sightings, close to the East Yorkshire Wolds, which were once home to wolves, could be significant,’ she says. ‘I often get asked what causes belief in werewolves, but what is most pertinent about this latest folk panic is that Old Stinker is thought to inhabit a landscape which saw some of the last wolves in England. I argue that he represents, not our belief in him as a supernatural shapeshifter, but our collective guilt at the extinction of an entire indigenous species.’Doctor George doesn’t believe the witnesses are mistaken or making up their stories. She says we should explore people’s fears and look for deeper meanings. ‘Old Stinker has reawakened the memory of what humans did to wolves, he’s drawn attention to re-wilding debates, and redeemed the big bad wolf that filled our childhood nightmares, reminding us that it is often humans, not wolves or the supernatural, that we should be afraid of.’Personally I find this more difficult to accept than people spotting an actual flesh-and-blood werewolf. When people see flying saucers, are they experiencing guilt over crockery they broke as a child?

WHO'S HE AND WHY IS SHE SCARED OF HIM?

How do you watch films at home these days?This may sound a bit weird to some, but I’m a film lover and always watch the whole movie from the beginning to the very end without chatting on the phone or switching off to continue my viewing at a later time. The curtains are drawn, the lights are switched off, the surround sound is turned up, and the answerphone silently picks up any calls during the film. The only things that might alter this scenario is someone calling at the door, or something unexpected occurring like a gas explosion or heart attack.I’ve always enjoyed films and television dramas in this way and I ask the above question because I realise it’s no longer the norm. I love seeing how the director sets everything out and tells the story. God only knows how these directors must feel when their works are shown on television, with adverts stuffed in at intervals to destroy any build of dramatic tension and the ending cut short to allow someone to talk glibly over the credits. They often shove in ten minutes of news and previews of completely unrelated programmes before returning for the final thirty minutes of film. Superb television dramas such as Line of Duty and Homeland get the same treatment. The heroine dies in her lover’s arms and a carefully chosen piece of sad music plays over the end credits, but this is spoken over and the words are scrunched up and rendered unreadable as some twat rattles on about the Graham Norton show coming up next, or what they’re showing next Thursday.I suppose this irritates me because I love films so much, but few seem to share my views. The other day I was reading the Facebook posts of someone who had never seen the Wicker Man. He’d acquired the DVD and was posting on his phone in real time as he watched…‘Mmmh, ten minutes in and I don’t know what to think yet…’‘Things are hotting up now and it’s getting quite gripping…’That’s good to hear, but obviously not gripping enough to prevent you chatting to everyone on social media as you half-watch.People do this kind of thing on Facebook all the time…‘I’m watching Shutter Island here and I’m not really sure what’s going on, lol…’Something that certainly ISN’T going on is concentration.Another Facebook friend was recently watching (and posting all the way through) the last episode of Sherlock, a series of stories that are often a little more complex that Geordie Shores. At the end he claimed he hadn’t understood it and thought it was complicated shit, just like the other episodes he’d seen.The idea of turning from the onscreen drama to text on the phone or chat about last Saturday’s football is really bizarre to me, but am I in the fuddy-duddy minority? Perhaps this is how things are evolving and directors will have to work around it. Maybe they could learn from the news channels and incorporate a changing scroll along the bottom of the screen with a round-up of the plot points. They could also use the scroll to remind viewers about who the various characters are. ‘The man in the blue suit is Alec Hardy, the detective in charge of the murder case’. People who cared about what they were watching could then read this between texting and get a vague sense of what was going on.During my time in the fire service, we’d always watch films or series such as the Sopranos late at night when the work was over, but in the last few years the viewing habits of my colleagues changed. Many would hold phones in their hands as they sat in front of the television and the majority were only half-watching as they gazed at their mobile screens.‘Why does he want to kill him?’‘Don’t you remember? He’s an FBI informer.’‘Eh? Which one?’This isn’t a criticism, but a simple observation of how things have dramatically changed. Most people now watch television at home with a phone clasped in their hand, or certainly within reach. I normally hold a glass of spirit with ice and I’ve never looked upon that as odd, so maybe I need to move with the times.When I was a kid, the local cinemas showed films on a loop and you could watch them as many times as you liked. If you missed the first fifteen minutes, you could hang back and watch it after the end. I always found this really odd, but nowhere near as odd as the people of today who still miss the start, even though the cinemas now charge around twenty quid (or thirty if you happen to have a sweet tooth).‘Oh, it doesn’t matter; you can always pick up the story’ is their excuse.I even knew a guy who left the cinema for ten minutes to nip out to a nearby shop when he remembered he’d forgotten to buy a lottery ticket.Am I in a dying minority of film fans who actually WATCH the film? It could be me, of course. After all, most people are capable of tweeting and talking on Facebook whilst driving, so they should certainly be able to do this whilst watching a film.

WICKER'S WORLD

A PICTORIAL TOUR OF THE WICKER MAN LOCATIONS.We all know the story of the Wicker Man, the 1973 Robin Hardy film which Christopher Lee called the best British horror movie of all time, but where was it filmed and can you still visit the locations?Yes, you can, and nothing much has changed in the past 45 years. If you base yourself in or near Newton Stewart, the majority of the locations can be toured in two leisurely days and fans can immerse themselves in Wicker Man nostalgia. For the full immersion experience, you can take a Christian along and kill them before heading home, first ensuring they’ve paid for their share of the petrol money.I think most fans are aware that Summerisle is a fictitious island and, with the exception of the aerial views of Skye during the title sequence, the film locations are all on the Scottish mainland. The opening, where Sergeant Howie lands his seaplane, was shot in Plockton off the A890 next to the Isle of Skye, a village that was also used as the setting of Hamish Macbeth, but the remainder was shot in southern Scotland, mostly in the county of Dumfries and Galloway.The cast stayed in the Kirroughtree House Hotel. The address is Newton Stewart, but this palatial manor house is actually just north of Creebridge off the A712. There are far more economical options in the small town, but the most obvious place for a fan to stay is south of Newton Stewart just off the A75 in the Ellangowan Hotel on St John Street, Creetown.This is where Sergeant Howie stays, although the name was changed to the Green Man Inn. If you can put up with the naked girls singing and slapping the wall in the next bedroom, it’s a nice little place and nothing has been altered in the bar. There are photographs of the filming on the wall and some of the older locals were extras in the pub scenes. Apparently, they still sit in the same seats.The Green Man Inn is actually two locations combined. Inside it’s the Ellangowan, but the exterior is the Calley Estate office building in Gatehouse of Fleet a few miles to the east. Go along the main street until you reach the clock tower and it’s opposite the Masons Arms pub.Many scenes were filmed in Kirkcudbright, southeast of Newton Stewart. In the centre on the A711 you’ll find the High Street Gallery, which was May Morrison’s post office and sweetshop.The alleyways around the gallery were used in many scenes where Howie follows the hobby horse.The Harbour Cottage Gallery by the River Dee is the bakery and appears in scenes when Howie first arrives after leaving his seaplane and later when he’s searching for May’s daughter Rowan.The maypole dance, the little school, and the old deconsecrated church with its graveyard are in the tiny village of Anwoth, west of Gatehouse of Fleet. From the A75 drive through Anwoth and the locations are found at the far end of the village.The lawn where the maypole dance took place is surprisingly small and the school straight opposite is now a holiday cottage.Nothing has changed inside or out – the shutters are still in place and the open staircase is still there, although the desks, kids and attractive teacher are nowhere to be found. The ruined church is quite atmospheric and you can see the spot where the fake altar was set. The skull and bones motif seen in the film was real and is still there on the side of an ancient tomb.Ayrshire was used for the brief scene of Lord Summerisle’s castle. Culzean Castle, just off the A719 southwest of Ayr, was used for these exterior shots, although the grounds around Summerisle’s home are back in Dumfries and Galloway.From Stranraer take the A75 east, then the minor road to New Luce and Castle Kennedy. These castle grounds are open to the public and the landscaped terraces are instantly recognisable as the locations of the Mayday procession and the naked stone circle dance.The standing stones were fibreglass props but the raised plateau of grass where they stood is easily identified. Lochinch castle stands at one end of the gardens with the ruins of Castle Kennedy at the other. The ruins are visible behind Edward Woodward in one of the scenes.The Machars Peninsula extends into the sea south of Newton Stewart and terminates in Burrow Head. Howie finally tracks Rowan Morrison to St Ninian’s Cave off the A747, near the tip of this peninsula.The shingle beach scenes with the barrels of ale on the cart were also filmed outside the cave.From Newton Stewart, follow the B7004 south and pick up the signs to St Ninian’s, where a path leads from the car park to the beach and cave. The cave is a monument protected by Scottish Heritage because of its connection with the Saint who brought Christianity to Scotland in the 5th century. Seven crosses can be seen scratched on the wall from the 6th and 7th century. It’s still a place of pilgrimage and there are always many other crosses that visitors have left on the floor of the cave.Using a little poetic license, Howie and Rowan exit St Ninian’s Cave through a hole on Burrow Head to the east which, unbelievably, is in a caravan park (signposted from Isle of Whithorn). They burnt two Wicker Men here on the rugged headland and the remains are still visible. The location where Howie is met by Summerisle and prepared for sacrifice is easily found and not as large as you remember. The smaller wicker man was filmed in a dip, with the wooden remains of the legs set in concrete and the date 1972 can be seen etched into this.Very little of these railway sleeper legs remain, but if you’d like a souvenir from the film, you can break off a piece with your fingers before it all rots away. This smaller prop was used for the final scene where the blazing head falls sideways to reveal the setting sun behind.The metal girder support legs of the larger animal-filled prop still stick out from the grassland and the circular area where the pagans dance is quite obvious in front of them.I met a woman here walking her dog who was pleased to talk about the film. Her farmer father supplied all the sacrificial livestock that were caged inside the wicker man.Good luck on your tour and remember, since 1994 British Health and Safety legislation insists that all wicker men now have to be fitted with an adequate fire escape.

EEEH, CONGRATULATIONS, MRS. HOLMES, LUV. IT’S A BOY.Nah then, was Sherlock ‘born’ oop in Yorkshire?

Sherlock Holmes, arguably the most famous detective in fiction (oh yes he is), was introduced to the world in 1887 when A Study in Scarlet was published in the Beeton’s Christmas Annual that year. Arthur Conan Doyle was somewhat vague about the character’s early days. Reading the books, we can estimate he was born in 1854, but there are no clues as to his place of birth. We can, however, make one or two Holmes-like deductions as to where the name Sherlock Holmes was born.In the late 19th century, Arthur Conan Doyle was a regular visitor to the Ingleton area of the Yorkshire Dales. His mother Mary moved from Edinburgh to this beautiful part of the world with her two daughters and lived in Masongill Cottage for 35 years between 1882 and 1917. A picture postcard house, Doyle often stayed there with his mother, arriving at Ingleton railway station and then taking a carriage to the tiny hamlet of Masongill a couple of miles away.On the 6th of August 1885, he married his first wife Louisa Hawkins at the nearby St. Oswald’s church in Thornton-in-Lonsdale. The reception was held across the lane in the Marton Arms, or the Church Stile Inn as it was called then.On his Yorkshire visits, Doyle always passed through an area of Ingleton known as the Holmes, which may or may not have inspired his character’s celebrated surname. Admittedly, this is tenuous, but the way he almost certainly arrived at the Christian name Sherlock is far more plausible. Virtually up to the publication date of A Study in Scarlet, Doyle’s detective was called Sheringford Holmes, so what could have prompted the change to Sherlock?Thomas Sherlock was the vicar of St. Mary’s church in Ingleton and his father, the wealthy newspaper owner Randal Hopley Sherlock, was visiting him in August 1875. Randal was killed by a bolt of lightning at Ingleton station and his son dedicated a stained glass window in the church to his memory – the Sherlock Window, as it’s known.A few years later, Randal’s brother Cornelius Sherlock redesigned St. Mary’s, the foundation stone was laid in May 1886 and the new church was opened the following year.The deadly lightning strike happened seven years before Doyle’s mother moved to Masongill, but this prominent newspaper man dying in such a startling and horrific manner was still huge news in Ingleton. Alighting at the station where Sherlock infamously died, Doyle had to pass St. Mary’s which stands just along the lane. He knew all about the fatality, the Sherlock Window and Sherlock’s newly opened church. In fact, in the twelve month period before A Study in Scarlet was published, he would hear the name Sherlock endlessly mentioned on every Yorkshire visit. It’s accepted by all the villagers here that this inspired the change from (the far too pretentious) Sheringford.The station was closed in the 60s and the picturesque viaduct beside it was fenced off.Any Holmes fan visiting the area should definitely call at Masongill, the church where Doyle was married and the Ingleton church with the Sherlock Window. They’d also be wise to pop into Uncle Jeremy’s Household. The shop is named after a short story written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1885, that first appeared in the Boy’s Own Paper in 1887.The story is set in and around this Dales village and features a doctor from Baker Street named Hugh Lawrence and his friend John Thurston. The pair aren’t a million miles away from another pair of characters we all know.In a Britain of cloned shops – Superdrug, Specsavers, Going Places and other faceless franchise outlets – it’s wonderful to find something unique like Uncle Jeremy’s Household. They sell some great things here including an adorable Sherlock Holmes teddy bear complete with pipe and deerstalker. This is no surprise as the owner is a Conan Doyle historian and a fountain of knowledge concerning the famous writer’s connection to this part of the world. Martyn Sutton is very friendly and has some unique Conan Doyle memorabilia on show.

TAKING THE PISS

With the right form of inducement, advertising or indoctrination, you can get people to do literally anything.They’ll pay £800 for sunglasses worth £8 and wear fur-lined Ugg boots in heatwaves. You can make the entire western world read Fifty Shades of Grey, transforming this atrocious trash into the biggest selling book of all time. You can get people to blow themselves to pieces with suicide vests or fly planes into buildings. You can get parents to deny their children lifesaving blood transfusions and drugs. You can make communities administer poison to their kids and then take it themselves, so they can all happily die in a mass cult suicide.Admittedly, some of these examples require a certain amount of religious brainwashing, but this isn’t the case with urine drinking. Yes, you can even get seemingly normal people to drink their own piss.John W. Armstrong was the pioneer of Urine Therapy, as this ludicrous practise became known. He saw how his parents would treat bee and jellyfish stings with urine and decided to try drinking it for ailments such as measles and the common cold. Armstrong was a huge believer in the Bible (something which might not come as a surprise) and took one of the proverbs literally. 5: 15 - "Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well". Naturally, he assumed that God was telling him to drink his own piss and, during his next period of illness, he fasted, eating nothing and drinking only water and urine. Amazingly he survived and, in 1944, he published his book on this new ‘medicine’: The Water of Life: A treatise on urine therapy.The book actually sold and readers began doing as he advocated, including the Prime Minister of India Morarji Desai. The PM claimed it worked wonders for him and, in 1978, publically stated that urine therapy was the perfect medical solution for the millions of Indians who couldn’t afford medical treatment. Plus, of course, if he could get the underprivileged masses drinking piss, he could spend his government budget on nuclear missiles and a space programme instead of health care. Everyone was a winner.Various Indian gurus adopted the idea and worked it into their yoga teachings. Some homeopaths – the people who treat MS with tap water – also claimed it was wonderfully beneficial. Some Mexican cancer clinics sold the idea as a ‘therapy’ for cancer sufferers. It also took off in Cameroon until the Health Minister warned against it. "Given the risks of toxicity associated with ingesting urine", he said, "the health ministry advises against the consumption of urine and invites those who promote the practice to cease doing so or risk prosecution."This might be a good point to mention that drinking your pee does no good whatsoever, something which, hopefully, the majority of people won’t need to be told. Urine-therapy is classed as an alternative medicine, but it’s as far away from medicine as you can get. Urine, as we all know, is a bodily by-product, secreted by the kidneys, that clears the detrimental crap out of the bloodstream. Nasa scientists researched it at length in the early seventies, with the idea that astronaut pee could be purified for drinking in space. They unanimously found that there was no benefit at all to be gained through drinking untreated urine, which shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise.Many people still drink their own pee, and not just in mental institutions. The likes of Bear Grylls can be found doing it in emergencies, and the author J.D. Salinger supposedly practised this odd ‘medicinal’ habit, but perhaps the most famous urine guzzler was the gorgeous Oscar-nominated actress Sarah Miles. Sarah used to piss in a glass every night before retiring and drink it the moment she woke. She began to talk openly about this in television interviews and, bizarrely, we haven’t seen much of her on the screen since.With the right form of inducement, advertising or indoctrination, you can get people to do literally anything.All this, of course, is just my personal opinion, (backed up a little by science, reason and common sense). If anyone feels the urge to drink their own piss - or anyone else’s for that matter - please don’t be put off by this cynical blog.