Was Layer Wood haunted?

[[deleted user]]

How many ghosts? I think maybe we should do a ghost count as there are so many in NL books.
1. Bless this house - the "sacrifice" who fell from the roof? didn't he haunt the front area of that house?
2. Lady Alice haunted the lower road?
3. was there a haunted bench or sun dial that would cause a severe lowering of mood?
4. of course, Gad's hall was haunted or was that resident evil?
What hauntings can you think of?

[[deleted user]]

page 183 Marguerite in 1620 thinks that The One Bull was haunted. "Suddenly she heard some bumping. People said that, in some haunted places, the supernatural manifestations took the form of the sounds like furniture being moved, and the One Bull had for many years been said to be haunted, by what and in what fashion nobody could say. "

[Barbara]

Good topic Alice
Wasn't the ghost in Merravey Jonathon Borage, who had the seizures and died in Layer Wood, but whose sprit haunted the window seat and other areas in the house?
The 'sacrifice' person who fell from the roof was his foster father wasn't it?
Also, I think, in The Old Priory, someone dies who the master mason sees as sacrifice to the house. The site itself seems to be haunted by the ghost of the abbot of the original Priory, or rather anyone who attempsts to live and /or build on it is visited by terrible luck .
Actually, now I think of it, isn't that true of Colin Lowrie's plantation in the Islands, that bad luck thing I mean.
And in Madselin, someone falls from the roof while building the new Norman Hall and Britt Four Ox had to take a test to prove it wasn't him who deliberately caused the fall

[[deleted user]]

WOW! good memory! I remember well the haunted window seat but could never figure out for sure who haunted it. Thanks for telling me. This would make a good neverending quiz question.
Yes, it was the foster father who took him out of school when he was much happier there and forced him into a trade against his will. I felt great sympathy for him and was glad when that mean old man fell off the roof! I wonder where the idea originated that a sacrifice was needed for a new building?
Oh, you are good with this ghost thing! I never remembered that about Colin Lowrie on the plantation. What I seem to remember there is that he smothered his own child as he didn't want it to grow up as a slave and incredibly enough I didn't blame him!!!!! What a terrible life he had. His final escape was truly amazing but based on a real rebellion I believe?
I have read Madselin but do not remember that at all so will be able to read it again. Some of them I can read over and over just like its the first time!!! I guess its my
Aliceheimers!
Thanks for these great insights. Did I tell you the last house I lived in I believe was haunted? I was just thinking about that last night as I started Ghost Story again and thinking I could make it into a story if I wrote it just right.
Did you ever notice how she will hint at something in one book which will puzzle you and then reveal something about that in another book? Then I will have an "ah ha" moment!

[Barbara]

God yes, he smothered his newborn sonwho his poor little slave mother wanted to call Scotland, I forgot that, tho it is soooo sad...........

[[deleted user]]

Yes, it was very sad but I sure understand what he did. I didn't remember that she wanted to call the baby Scotland. I guess I understand it better now since just finishing Wide Sargasso Sea...talk about SAD!!!

[Djo]

The seat by the sundial that could cause a severe lowering of mood was from the House Trilogy. I think it was at the spot where the old priest was buried. The big room at the Old Vine was haunted by Martin Reed's second wife (can't remember her name). I think it was the schoolboys who said that they saw a lady playing a tambourine and dancing. There was another ghost at the Old Vine, but I can't remember who/what it was.

[Djo]

I was convinced that the last house I lived in was haunted. I never noticed anything until after my first child was born (about a year after we moved in). sometimes there was a lot of incidents (3 or 4 a week), and then nothing for a couple of months. It was mainly small stuff - hearing someone walking around in another part of the house, a smell of perfume or tobacco, or a movement in my peripheral vision. My husband used to notice the same things and we would compare notes. I know these things can be explained away, but we never wear perfume or aftershave and have never allowed any smoking in the house. We had concrete floors downstairs and still heard someone moving around down there. The sounds from upstairs were very obviously footsteps to me. My husband reset all the floorboards so they couldn't move or creak.

I didn't mind the small stuff, but the ghost also removed a blanket from my daughter's cot and folded it in a way I never have, beside the cot. That totally freaked me. I also had a "heavy weight" dropped on my legs when I was in bed, still awake. It was like the weight of a adult cat jumping on you from a wardrobe. My husband was away, and I just lay there wondering which was worse, lying there in the dark or switching the light on. Boy that was scary. This ghost also 'manhandled' me a few times, always gently, but it would make me jump.

I eventually came to the conclusion that it was my mother after a strange incident with my second child. It would be too difficult to put into words, except to say that Hannah (my daughter, aged 6 months)'acknowledged' the ghost beside me. The ghost was often hanging about at nappy changing time. There was a wordless understanding from Hannah that it was my mother. All sounds a bit fanciful, but the ghost never appeared again.

My mother died about 20 years ago and never saw any of her grandchildren.

Although it was scary at times, there was never a feeling of danger or evil at all - more curiosity and a sense of humour (it slapped my bum one day!).

[Barbara]

I didn't remember the haunted sundial - or rather I did remember it, but in a short story - an artefact that looked like an ornamental pedestal , but was really part of a stone cross where by tradition lepers used to have charity left out for them, so taht no-one had to see or touch them. The misery of their plight was somehow soaked into the very stone

[Barbara]

Once when visiting, I was waiting for my husband to collect me and we heard him come in the street door, up the stairs and try to open the inner door. Except that the street door was closed and locked...
The flat was part of an old, rented house and contained some old furniture, including the bed. When this was replaced, the hauntings stopped, and a bit of local research told us that the previous ( deceased) owner was an old, mysogynist bachelor.
We figured it was females,and particularly unaccompanied females he disliked.

[Barbara]

That is very frightening , the thing with your dogs cornering the ghost....

[Barbara]

Yes, the gold coins in Layer Wood, I remember, in Bless This House. They were originally Jon Borage's, that he offered to Elizabeth to run away with him .Lost there when he and Elizabeth made love then Elizabeth left and later married Tom Rowhedge. Jon just stayed there in misery and it seems that he must have had another of his seizures as he died there and his body, and his gold, lay undisturbed for four hundred years (or something like that) . Jon left some very powerful spirit behind, didn't he? Or rather his misery did, as did the misery at the lepers cross and around the gold Hester Roon's poor mother Ellie hid in the mattress in the attic.
I have vague stirrings of memory about some ancient silver being found somewhere which caused utter grief and bad luck, and then it being realised that it consisted of thirty pieces.....
Can anyone recall this image from NL? Or have I got it mixed up from somewhere else?

[[deleted user]]

Barbara wrote: " That is very frightening , the thing with your dogs cornering the ghost....

Oddly enough I wasn't frightened at all in the day time but very curious! My dogs however, were livid and upset. Later my ex was back in states and I put up a new light fixture cover I had picked up in Felixstowe and the bulb blew so I thought...ooops, this is the night I am going to really see something but nothing happened. It seemed conditions had to be exactly right and were not.

"

[[deleted user]]

Ah, thank you! I think it was his deep grief that she wouldn't marry him. And the deep emotion lingered there. (jon Borage's) I seem to recall someone found one piece of the gold and was unaffected but when someone else came they were deeply affected by the emotion. But need to read it again. Somewhere I read that strong emotion can leave an electromagnetic pattern where it happened.
I don't recall that about the 30 pieces of silver.

[Djo]

It was Charlotte in 1848 who was sent to stay with her uncle at Merravay (in disgrace for falling in love with an unsuitable man). She was very susceptible to the feelings of despair by the window seat and was terrified of being in the hall after dark.

Charlotte's uncle closed the path through Layer Wood (the short cut from Nettleton to Clevely) to deter poachers and also set man-traps. A young gypsy boy was caught in one of these man-traps, by the ankle, and was locked up in the old buttery at Merravay overnight, before being taken to Baildon gaol in the morning. Charlotte was horrified by the callous treatment to this young boy and snuck down at night to give him some food and drink. He managed to persuade her to give him a knife to use on the boarded up windows to make his escape. In return he offered her a gold coin he had found near the man-trap. He didn't feel any vibes from the coin but Charlotte did and couldn't touch it.

To quote the book:

"I knew, instantly and surely, that the gold coin between the gypsy's finger and thumb was connected, in some way, with the hatred and misery and despair which lay over the cold spot in Merravay hall and by the back porch."

[Djo]

Following on from Alice's experience with ghosts and pets ...

I'm not sure if I would feel better or worse to have a pet that could also sense a presence.

Talking of lightbulbs (which were mentioned earlier!), I had a bit of a fright with a lightbulb one day. I was sitting in my kitchen chatting with a friend of mine about a mutual (and very dear) friend who had recently been killed in a road accident. As we chatted we heard a funny sound in my hallway and went to investigate. We found a lightbulb lying in the middle of the hallway. It had been in an upstairs hallway fitting, and had somehow 'fallen out', bounced down the stairs and rolled to a stop in the hallway downstairs, still intact. It was a bayonet fitting, which is usually very secure. It scared the pants off us at the time (especially as we had drunk rather a lot of wine), but I have never had a lightbulb do that before.

My cat Vashti had a horrible habit of sitting across the room from me and just staring at me. If I tried to entice her to come to me (or stop staring) she would shift her gaze to just over my shoulder. Her eyes would go all big as if she was seeing a bogey monster and then she would dash from the room. I am convinced that there was nothing there - she did it to torment me. For a cat, she had a perverse sense of humour. Or would that be typical for a cat. Whichever, she was a wonderful companion to me for 16 yrs even if she was wildly irritating.

[Djo]

Oh yes, I also meant to say that I made a point of never reading scary books or watching scary films as I spent about 20 yrs living in a house that backed onto a massive Victorian graveyard. I mainly lived there alone, although I used to take in lodgers at times. I had to be very strict with myself to make sure I didn't get spooked by it. The view out of the back windows was pitch black at night-time and if I let my imagine wander .....

[[deleted user]]

Oh, Joanne, thanks for the story about your cat. That would have scared me too! I think cats are supposed to be even more sensitive than dogs.

I guess it was a bayonet fitting that I had the problem with too. Here in the US I only use light bulbs that screw in but in England the one I was messing with was to be pushed up then twisted and it sort of popped into place. would that be a bayonet fitting?

[Djo]

That's right. They can be quite difficult if you've got old light fitting, but there was nothing wrong with this particular one. Once the lightbulb is in it is secure with no way of falling out. The sticky out bits on the bulb have to be turned along a horizontal groove then they drop down into place. So the bulb had to push itself up and turn around to be able to fall out.

[Barbara]

My Lilith (cat) used to see unseen things too. When Michael used to work in hospitality and was out till the small hours, I used to wake to see Lilith, with her eyes blazing,and her fur erect watching something/somebody cross the bedroom............She didn't see anythign when he was home, only when I was alone.

[[deleted user]]

Was that in England or Australia? A Scottish woman who came to see me in NM told me that England is haunted only by male ghosts!! I always wonder about that.

[Djo]

NM??

There are definitely female ghosts in England. Hampton Court Palace in Middlesex is supposed to be haunted by one of Henry VIII's wife - not sure which one. And there must be many more.

[[deleted user]]

New Mexico! Sorry, we get into the habit of abbreviating all the states here. I can sure imagine Henry's wives coming back after all they went thru.