SPOOKED SCOTLAND:EXCLUSIVE interviews with the stars of the new paranormal TV show.

But when Stanley laughed it appeared:

‘a strange thing to see in that dark, still face, where toil and danger and horror had set their seals. But it seemed to light up the man from within and show a new and quite different side to his character... Henry

Stanley had a look of the forest gloom as marked as Dante’s contemporaries described of him: that of one who had traversed Heaven and Hell.’ There was also Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate, now best remembered for his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade. Bram got to know Tennyson personally and they visited each other’s homes on a number of occasions. Bram would however observe how when Tennyson was somewhat displeased, he ‘had at times that lifting of the upper lip which shows the canine tooth, and which is so marked an indication of militant instinct.’ and would observe the same expression but even more pronounced in the tough, leather-faced, steely eyed explorer and orientalist Sir Richard Burton best remembered for his translation of A Thousand Nights and a Night often referred to as The Arabian Nights.

Burton’s translations include the story of Vikram and the Vampire, an ancient Hindu tale of a huge bat, vampire or evil spirit which entered and animated the bodies of the dead

The next step in Stoker’s research took place during a three-week family holiday for Bram, Florence and Noel in the north east Yorkshire fishing port and resort of Whitby. During this holiday Bram would make one of the most significant discoveries of his entire literary career. Arriving during the second week in August 1890, the Stokers were staying at Mrs.

Whitby viewed from the West Cliff in the late 19th century

Veazey’s house at 6 Royal Crescent on Whitby’s West Cliff with the second floor as their sitting room and their bedroom on the third, both of which commanded magnificent sea views. Beneath them on the first floor, were three ladies from Hertford; Isabel and Marjorie Smith and their older friend Miss Stokes, suggested by Cordelia Stamp in Dracula Discovered to be ‘the prototypes of Lucy and her friend Mina, whilst the older Miss Stokes became Mrs. Westernra.’

(Stamp, Cordelia Dracula Discovered (Caedmon, Whitby 2001) p.14) Why the Stokers chose Whitby is not recorded but their friend the novelist and illustrator George du Maurier was staying around the corner at the same time as the Stokers and it may have been he who recommended the resort as a place for them to stay. Bram’s notebooks reveal he collected all manner of history, dialect, folklore, legends, geographical and location details for the book. In fact, he has more material from Whitby than any other

topic in his notes. (Eighteen-Bisang and Miller, Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula p. 384) He even typed up ten pages of details from his survey of the inscriptions he found to mariners and those drowned at sea on the headstones in St Mary’s Churchyard on the East Cliff and would use a number of these names in the book.

Bram talked to local fishermen and the local Coast Guard William Petherick and it could well be in Petherick’s neat hand that the notes are written about the wrecks of the British ship Mary and Agnes and the Russian schooner Dmitry that occurred on 24 October 1885. The Dmitry had been caught in terrible seas, had only just managed to enter Whitby harbour and ran ashore in Collier’s Hope. However, the storm beat over the vessel and brought down her masts and the crew were forced to abandon ship. Fortunately, no lives were lost. Bram dramatically recreates the story in Dracula, retaining many of the facts about the wrecking of the Dmitry but changes her name to the Demeter and her sailing port from Narva to Varna. The fate of the crew and their cargo in Dracula, however, was a very different matter. The crew of the Demeter disappeared one by one. This was probably based on a tale Bram recorded in his notes dated 30 July 1890. It was related to him by some old fishermen he encountered on the cliff who told him of a whaler named

The Esk and its Captain who would not slacken his sail, cursing that he would be in ‘Hell or Whitby tonight!’

He knocked down the crew one by one as they implored him to change his mind. The Esk was wrecked and all bar three of the crew were lost.

Was the ‘Whitechapel Vampire’ one of the inspirations for Bram Stoker when he created the story of Dracula?

Slain’s Castle, Cruden Bay, Port Errol c1905

The Kilmarnock Arms, Port Errol c1905

Casket containing the ashes of Bram Stoker and his son Noel in the East Columbarium at Golder’s Green Crematorium, London

ran into churchyard’ (Eighteen-Bisang and Miller, Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula p. 168) an imaginative leap from the mind of Bram and the shape shifting Count arrives in England. Perhaps it was the discovery of the story of the Dmitry that inspired Bram to seek out more information about the Black Sea and Danubian ports the schooner could have come from for the story, or a casual browse at the Whitby Library that led Bram’s hand to alight upon: An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with Various Political Observations Relating to Them written by retired diplomat William Wilkinson, published in 1820. Within the 320 pages of the volume Bram came across a name that would change the entire tenor of his book. The first appearance of Dracula is on page seventeen where Wilkinson describes how the Voïvode did battle with the Turks and were defeated after a bloody battle. As a consequence, they were compelled to become a tributary of the Turk and ordered to pay an annual tribute of three thousand paisters:

‘Wallachia continued to pay it until the year 1444; when

Ladislas King of Hungary, preparing to make war against the

Turk engaged the Voïvode Dracula to form an alliance with him. The Hungarian troops marched through the principality and were joined by four thousand Wallachians under the

command of Dracula’s son.’ (Wilkinson, William An Account of the

Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia: With Various Political Observations Relating to

Them (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, London 1820) p.17) The name crops up again two pages on in the account of when the Wallachians attempted to shake off the yoke of Sultan Mahomet II in 1460:

‘Their Voïvode, also named Dracula, did not remain satisfied with a mere prudent measure of defence; with an army he crossed the Danube and attacked the few Turkish troops that were stationed in his neighbourhood’ (Wilkinson, Wallachia p.19) Wilkinson explains in a footnote on the same page:

Dracula in Wallachian language means Devil. Wallachians were at that time, as they are at present, used to give this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous either by courage, cruel actions, or cunning. The name certainly impressed itself upon Stoker. No longer would Count Wampyr feature in the notes, his name was resolutely discarded – enter Count Dracula! Where Whitby undoubtedly played its part inspiring and providing a superb setting for highly dramatic and significant moments in the story the text would be written, and additional inspiration would be found elsewhere. Bram had enjoyed regular trips to Port Errol (Cruden Bay), Aberdeenshire on the west coast of Scotland, throughout the 1890s and for the rest of his life. The backdrop of the distant Braemar mountains and the baronial Slains Castle, then the home of the Earls of Errol, high upon its jagged stone cliffs was almost certainly another inspiration for Castle Dracula and Port Errol itself was the inspiration for Bram’s spirited tale The Watter’s Mou’ (1895) and would be revisited in The Mystery of the Sea (1902). Bram first stayed there at the Kilmarnock Arms in 1894. During his return visit there in 1895 he walked along the beach, clambered over the rocks and took in the bracing air for his constitutional exercise and wrote the early chapters of Dracula.

Beyond the Grave

When the first print run of 3,000 copies of Dracula hit the shelves in 1897 the British public had been aware of vampire stories in newspaper reports claiming to be fact and in fiction books and part works since the late eighteenth century and the crimes if Jack the Ripper in 1888 had been ascribed to the ‘Whitechapel Vampire.’ The difference was that Bram set the story in the present day, weaving in modern travel to one of the far flung and mysterious corners of continental Europe. He included modern inventions such as typewriters and phonographs as recording devices, a direct blood transfusion kit and even modern characterisations recognising ‘The New Woman.’ All of which combined in a heady brew to set the scene for a disturbing tale of an immortal undead count who appeared, at least initially, to be a force untamed and able to overwhelm people in the sophisticated modern world with powers they had dismissed as nonsense in the wake of progress.

It may be hard to believe now, with the hindsight we have of Hammer Horror Dracula films starring Christopher Lee in the 1960s and 70s and Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of the Count for Universal Pictures back in the 1930s, that Dracula was not a smash hit in its day.

The first edition of Dracula went on sale at six shillings each. Bram’s contract stated he would receive no royalties for the first 1,000 but thereafter would receive one shilling and sixpence for every one sold. It certainly did not make Bram’s fortune, he would go on to write more books including The Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903) one of the first books in British fiction to include a reanimated mummy and his last, truly strange tale, the Lair of the White Worm (1911) which drew the inspiration for its monster from old English folk tales of fierce dragon like worms that laid waste to countryside until slain by a brave knight. When Bram Stoker died in 1912 his obituaries spoke of his greatest literary legacy being his two volume Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, but time has told a different story. Many of the books of the great literati of Bram’s day are now out of print and long forgotten whereas Dracula has never been out of print for 125 years. Long may it continue to thrill and chill many generations to come. I just wish Bram could have seen its enduring success.

Further Reading: The Dracula Secrets (History Press 2012) Neil Storey’s original ground-breaking work on the connections between Bram Stoker, Dracula and Jack the Ripper.

Neil’s new biography of Bram Stoker is due for publication by Pen & Swords Books later this year. IMAGES: All are from originals either taken by Neil Storey or from originals in the Neil Storey Archive with the exception of the original yellow cover Dracula that would be much appreciated.

The Story of Storey

Neil R. Storey is an award-winning historian who has been investigating ghosts and paranormal phenomena for over thirty years. He has a life-long interest in Dracula, is recognised internationally as a leading expert on Bram Stoker and has assembled one of the finest collections of Bram Stoker material in private hands. Known for his ground-breaking research, Neil has been in continuous publication since 1989. He is the author of countless articles, over fifty books including The Dracula Secrets, The Little Book of Death, and is the creator of the popular Grim Almanac series that chart the dark histories of the counties of Great Britain. A graduate of the University of East Anglia, he guest lectures for both academic and social audiences across Britain and around the world. He frequently appears as guest expert on television and radio programmes such as The Magic and Mystery Show,

Most Haunted, Who Do You Think You Are? and

Help! My House is Haunted. Blessed with a warm wit and humour, he spends the precious little time he has at leisure enjoying good food and wine with good company.

Digging up bodies of the recently buried dead and selling them to anatomists for dissection is a practice better known as body snatching. A practice that is dominated by two, if not five, individuals.

Move Over Burke and Hare

Burke and Hare, famous the

world over for being the ‘body snatchers’ who’ve never dug up a dead body in their life and Bishop, Williams and May (aka Head), the three ‘London Burkers’ whose story is quickly catching up to Burke and Hare’s celebrity status.

But here is not the place to try to change the minds of those who think that two, now famous navvies from Ireland were body snatchers. No, that is reserved for a discourse on social media, a blog post or YouTube video that falls silent ‘til someone raises the topic again.

This is the place for the real body snatchers. The ones who have slipped under the radar and whose stories remain untold. The ones whose passion for their craft caused a sensation in their day, but few, if any, can now recount their tale.

Between 1711 and the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832, those loved ones left behind to mourn would scurry into parish graveyards to check that it wasn’t their recently departed that they were reading about in the papers. That it wasn’t their burial shrouds or blood that had been discovered strewn across the graveyard floor, or that it wasn’t the cadaver of their mother or brother, back cracked and body corded tight into a box and subsequently found in a coach office halfway to Edinburgh.

written by Susie Lennox

Fear of the body snatcher ran rife, and none were as fearful as those living in Glasgow in the first decades of the 19th Century. The Ramshorn Kirkyard Scandal

Early 19th Century Glasgow was a place where anatomy students could pay for their studies in cadavers if they were unable to meet the three Guinea course fee. No questions asked. In fact, lecturers positively

encouraged it, and groups of up to eight young medical students were known affectionately by their teachers as a ‘private party’. One such raid took place in the early hours of Tuesday 14th December 1813. Less than 24 hours earlier, Mrs Janet McAllaster, wife of a Glasgow wool merchant, had died at her home in Great Hamilton Street. Those at her funeral the previous morning diligently watched as she was lowered into the ground and soil was heaped up over her coffin. When Henry Braid, the gravedigger went to check on any settling the following morning, he perhaps could not fail to notice that the grave looked ‘as if a set of pigs had been rooting in it’. The coffin maker and the church warden were then called in to help with investigations. Suspicions soon led to Pattison’s rooms at 10 College Street and by way of warning an apprentice was sent to forewarn the anatomist to expect the authorities. If Pattison really did have the body, it could be put back, quietly and unseen. No questions asked. But there were two body snatching raids in the city that night and the apprentice relayed the wrong information to Pattison. Why should he worry, he exclaimed, the body he had was from Ramshorn Kirkyard, the one they were looking for was from the Cathedral. Or so he believed.

It took half an hour of furious hammering before the authorities were eventually permitted into Pattison’s anatomy rooms. Sentries stationed at the back of the building confirmed that nothing had been disposed of through the open windows.

The anatomy school in College Street was no different and Granville Sharp Pattison’s ‘private party’ regularly raided graveyards to get cadavers for the number of students on his books which was steadily increasing with each dissecting season.

Therefore, the body they were looking for should still be inside.

The Human Jigsaw

Of Pattison and the students involved, things went surprisingly well, in the end. After initially being bailed the trial moved to Edinburgh such was the fury of the Glasgow citizens, plus it would be easier to find an impartial jury.

In summing up, the Lord Justice-Clerk delivered his sentence. Pattison and the three students involved were all acquitted, but they were left in no doubt that should they try something similar again, they would not be as fortunate.

The mis-matched body parts were to be Pattison’s saviour. Despite the positive identification of Janet’s head by her dentist, James Alexander, during the trial it was discovered that the pelvis that had so quickly been attributed to Janet McAllaster, a woman of 40 years of age who had borne eight children, was in fact that of a seventeen-year-old virgin.

When access to the dissecting rooms was eventually made, six bodies were found at different stages of dissection. Among them were tubs filled with brine which, when examined, contained the severed heads of some of those snatched.

Despite its obvious mutilation, identification of one of the heads was made by McAllaster’s dentist, James Alexander, who identified the woman from her recently fitted upper false teeth.

The Numerous Cases of Henry Gillies

To say that Henry GIllies was tenacious is perhaps stretching things a little far, but he was certainly keen on the money body snatching offered him and so this particular body snatcher, although not very good, pops up on a number of occasions as he’s chased through the history books.

Alexander‘s meticulous record keeping of the work he’d carried out on McAllaster would play a key part in the trial, and he would later show that a mandible found in one the pockets of Pattison’s students, would be a perfect fit for the false teeth he’d recently made for Janet.

Janet McAllaster’s case is often referred to as being the first recorded case where dental records were used as identification of the victim.

From this discovery, other ‘bits’ of what the authorities believed to be Mrs McAllaster were gathered together after a thorough search of the anatomy rooms. Partially anatomised hands were taken to relatives to confirm her identity, shoes were fitted onto the feet attached to the legs lying on the dissecting table and a lock of hair, taken from the partially dissected head was found to be a likeness to some which was taken prior to burial.

Reconstructed like a human jigsaw, Janet McAllaster was put back together with no consideration as to whether or not the parts matched. On Saturday 18th December, Janet was reburied in the same grave she came out of, her 48-hour adventure well and truly over with. His first big case, let’s say, or at least the one that brought him to my attention, involved the transportation of a number of boxes from the parish of Tynemouth, Northumberland to Edinburgh in the final months of 1819.

Just like the eight boxes that had gone before her, the elderly corpse of a Mrs Buck was found naked, trussed up with cord and stuffed into a box a yard long and half a yard wide, about the same size as her torso.

She had been discovered after Gillies had bribed a cabman on the night of 29th December at the docks in Shields, hoping to be swiftly taken to Newcastle. Once the party had arrived at the Bird in Bush Inn, however, things fell apart when the agent for the Edinburgh coach refused to accept the box.

From Wellcome Collection. Etching with engraving by W. Austin,

1773. Austin, William, 1720-1820.

Found guilty and ordered to pay a £20 fine, Gillies would also serve a twelve month stretch in Morpeth Gaol learning little, in anything, from his time inside.

Was this body snatcher cutting his teeth in Tynemouth? I think not. Gillies was a former gravedigger at Calton Burial Ground in Glasgow, his employment coming to an abrupt end after he was caught reselling coffin furniture back to the local undertakers. He knew quite well what he was doing and the demand for the commodity he was providing.

By 1828, Gillies rough handling of cadavers was in the limelight once again when he left the graveyard at Anderston covered in evidence of his visit.

At 3.30am, on the morning of St Patrick’s Day 1828, Henry Gillies, along with three others was spotted nonchalantly walking along North Street in Anderston, not too far from Glasgow. Over the shoulders of two of them were sacks, each containing a dead body recently lifted from the New Burial Ground.

Sensing that they’d been spotted, both sacks were immediately thrown over the nearest hedge and the four body snatchers tried to make their escape.

The sacks contained the bodies of two females. One, an elderly woman unidentified due to ‘the body being in such a state of putrefaction and decay that no person could recognise or identify it’. The other contained the small body of Robina McNeill, still showing signs of the leeches that had been applied to her breast by the doctors just before she passed away.

At the trial, the outcome of which remains unknown, police officer Donald McLean described Gillies as a ‘corpse lifter’ and quickly proceeded to reduce his character further. ‘He has been taken up ten or twelve times in the last year’ McLean said, on similar charges, and his house repeatedly searched.

Inside his house, along with his wife and mistress, a small hollow pool was discovered, filled with a collection of blood and water giving the house an oppressive smell. In fact, when Gillies himself was arrested in the first few hours of St Patrick’s Day, the stench from him was described as ‘intolerable’, the stench from him being just as offensive as that from the corpse.

For three year there is no sign of the corpse lifter Henry Gillies until a small report is printed in The Standard in April 1831.

Little Ireland, Manchester

The atrocities of Burke and Hare were still on the minds of many when the paper ran a short account of a discovery of a ‘gang of monsters’ - who were supposed to rival the duo in Scotland - had been made in an area known as Little Ireland, Manchester.

Late one evening, as a ten-year-old girl was making her way home through the labyrinths of Little Ireland, she became distracted after glancing through a kitchen window.

From Wikicomons attributed to Chris J Farrell

The girl stood for a while as she watched an old woman, described by the papers as ‘being a miserable specimen of age and decrepitude… and would in a former age have been accounted sufficient to support a charge of demonology or witchcraft’ hunched over the kitchen table, quickly striping flesh from the body of a dead Greyhound.

The girl, clearly shocked, continued home, telling everyone she passed on her way exactly what she’d just seen. It wasn’t long before the rumour mills started, and a mob had formed outside the little door in Oxford Road demanding answers as to what was happening inside.

When they eventually gained access, they were confronted with a number of bones and skeletons of small children and in a corner of the room, barely alive on a bed of straw was a small infant. In a cupboard, in the corner of the kitchen, was a jug. Inside was the dissected body of an infant, submerged in bloody water.

The mob began to tear the property apart and if the landlord hadn’t called for the police, Ameila no doubt would have been lynched. Taken into custody for her own protection, the police must have been highly surprised when a few hours later, in walked an intoxicated Henry Gillies claiming that they’d just arrested his mother. Gillies lost no time in informing them that he was a body snatcher and also in the employ of some of Manchester’s surgeons as an articulator. He too was swiftly taken into custody. After the ‘Manchester surgeon’ had paid the £20 bail, the case was dropped by the papers but not before they summed up their finding for their avid readers.

Gillies was employed by the surgeons in the area, this much was true. But whether he sold them cadavers is debatable. He was instead responsible for articulating the skeletons of previously dissected cadavers, making them into teaching aids within the school. For this he received £1 per week.

Ignoring the advice of his superiors, Gillies had taken his work home with him. The infant found in the cupboard was a stillborn child that had been dissected earlier that week and Gillies was tasked to clean the skeleton and articulate it.

Also found during the raid on the property was a brass syringe which the newspapers labelled as a ‘blood sucker’. In fact, this was a syringe used in blood preparations ‘A mix of wax and other compounds … injected into the veins of a subject so as to represent blood’. I cannot imagine that Gillies would have been involved in the more intricate details of specimen preparation such as this and had more than likely taken a fancy to the syringe rather than taken it for his work. The ‘penny press’ delighted in this case as you can no doubt imagine. Just like journalists would do after the hanging of William Burke in 1829, they attempted to send the public’s imagination into overdrive with this one. Little stories started to appear around the sale of pies, the meat inside being from children, their flesh having been turned into meat.

It was difficult to choose just two cases in which to share other body snatching cases that are now overshadowed by events in 1829. Gillies’ case has been recounted, in part, from my book ‘Bodysnatchers: Digging Up The Untold Stories Of Britain’s Resurrection Men’. I could have shared more, but you have to stop somewhere. My research into Britain’s forgotten body snatchers has by no means finished and it wouldn’t surprise me to find more cases that could rival those of Burke and Hare but have yet to catch the imagination of the public

like those two have. Suzie X

Suzie has been studying body snatching for over 17 years ever since her lecturer at university persuaded her to look at the legal implications surrounding the supply and demand of cadavers for her undergrad dissertation, moving her away from her original topic of baby farming. ‘I initially wanted to write about something that would hold people’s attention, and well, body snatching worked and now I’m hooked’. Suzie writes regularly for her website diggingup1800.com and she can be found on social media as @DiggingUp1800. Her book ‘Bodysnatchers: Digging Up The Untold Story of Britain’s Resurrection Men’ was published by Pen & Sword in 2016.

The Fascinating TRUE story behind The INFAMOUS Newby Church Ghost Photograph

A MIKE COVELL EXCLUSIVE

The ghost of Newby Church, known in some literature as “The Spectre of Newby Church,” or the “Newby Monk” was a phantom figure captured on camera at the Church of Christ the Consoler, which stands on the grounds of Newby Hall in North Yorkshire.

As a young boy seeing the image in all the ghost books on my late father’s shelf, I became fascinated by the spooky and spectacular image of this alleged apparition looking back at me. I became mesmerised by it, but as I grew older my hunger and interest grew, and I decided to investigate the picture, and the story behind it.

Then, during lockdown, with a lot of spare time on my hands, I decided to look into the story, and began researching using the archives which were offering free access to card holders. What I found was staggering and might well go somewhere in explaining the story behind the photograph and the alleged apparition of the infamous “Spectre of Newby Church.” THE STORY

There are two versions of events of when the image was snapped, according to the report published in The People, dated Sunday August 13th, 1967, the photograph was taken seven years previously, but most books and website state that the photograph was captured in 1963.

If we are to believe the story from 1963 the image was captured in 1963 by the Reverend Kenneth F. Lord, and appears to look like a human, with some claiming that the image shows a ghostly 16th Century monk, with a white shroud over the face which represents a disfigurement such as leprosy. Others, however, claim that the mask hides an accomplice and that the photo is a hoax. It was stated, in the report in The People, that the reverend was a keen photographer, and decided to take some shots inside and outside the church, with the idea of selling them as postcards to visitors. At the time he noticed nothing unusual, and all went well until he later developed them.

When he began to make prints of them, he was astonished to see on one picture what appeared to be the figure of a cowled monk on the steps of the alter. He was quoted in The People as saying “I still don’t know what to make of it all. I did not want to seek publicity, nor do I want people to think it is some sort of ghost. I am not interested in spiritualism of ghost hunting and am quite frankly sceptical of the picture. All I can truthfully say is that, to my knowledge, I did nothing to interfere with the film. I did not superimpose the figure by accident or design. My first instinct was to throw the negative on the fire and forget about it. Perhaps I should have done so. I certainly hope people won’t come flocking to my church in the hope of seeing a ghost.” Mr. Lord went on to state “No one had reported seeing anything strange in the church before. It may well be a trick of the light.”

THE EXPERTS

At the time The People had their chief photographer, Stan Jannus, analyse the image. He took the negative to the makers of the film – an internationally famous firm. After a series of tests their laboratories reported the negative had not been interfered with in any way. There was no fault in the emulsion layer or with the processing. A double exposure would have been impossible because of a preventative device on Mr. Lord’s camera.

Another technical expert, who at the time was employed by the “Amateur Photographer” magazine, confessed; “I spent some years in the laboratory of a photographic manufacturer’s sorting out faults such as this, but I can give no logical or convincing explanation of it. The nebulous dark grey outline with what appears to be a white cowl I cannot explain. I must confess, I am puzzled.”

The experts at the time did inform The People that there was a way in which such a photo could be hoaxed.

KIDNAPPED AND KILLED

It was claimed that the method was to shut down the camera, to a very small aperture. Place a cloaked figure in position and expose him to film for five seconds, then cover the lens, remove the figure, and carry on the exposure for another 15 seconds. The result should be a “ghost.”

Some claim that the figure is 9 ft tall, while others claim that it could be a hoaxer with a long cloak stood on boxes, thus giving the impression that it is much taller. Image analysis suggests that the picture is not a double exposure. The Newby Church Ghost is one of the most celebrated ghost stories in the history of Yorkshire ghost stories, up there with the Roman Soldiers at Treasure House. It was, therefore, featured in numerous books including mentions in Arthur C Clarke’s World of Strange Powers, John Fairly and Simon Welfare, G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1984, Where the Ghosts are, Hans Holzer, Parker Publishing, 1984, The Ghost in the Picture, Meg Schneider, Scholastic, 1988, Haunted Houses, Janet Riehecky, Children’s Press, 1989, Haunted Houses: The Unsolved Mystery, Lisa Wade McCormick, Capstone Press, 2010, and many more.

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH

The church where the photograph was taken is named The Church of Christ the Consoler, and is situated in the grounds of Newby Hall, at Skelton-on-Ure, in North Yorkshire. The church is a Victorian Gothic Revival church, built in early English style by William Burges. On March 6th, 1967, the church was made a Grade I listed building. The church was founded in 1870, and itself has a dark history behind its founding and funding which to date has never been thoroughly investigated in relation to the photograph, until now!

According to the story Frederick Vyner was taken prisoner by Greek brigands in Athens on April 11th, 1870. On Tuesday April 19th, 1870, British newspapers began running stories about his capture, including The Manchester Evening News, The Glasgow Evening Citizen, The Bradford Daily Telegraph and many more. Throughout this period British newspapers up and down the country were reporting on the case, stating that Vyner was with others who had been kidnapped, but were being held in a house overlooking the coast. By April 21st, 1870, they had murdered him, and a large ransom had been demanded, but only partially collected. Coincidentally, the newspapers in Great Britain were still reporting he was alive until the morning of Monday April 25th , 1870, when The Globe, reported that it had been announced that Frederick Vyner was dead, and that the kidnappers had murdered him. Vyner was aged just 23 years old at the time of his death. The story caused a sensation in Great Britain. On Friday April 21st, 1871, a special memorial was placed in York Minster in memory of Frederick Vyner. Frederick’s mother, Lady Mary Vyner decided to use the remaining funds to create a church as a memorial, and the church as thereafter erected with news that the foundation stone had been laid on Wednesday May 17th, 1871, when the Leeds Mercury, dated Thursday May 18th, 1871, reported on the construction. It stated that the church would be erected as a memorial, and that the body of Frederick Vyner had been returned to England exactly 12 months to the day earlier. It was said that the church would cost £10,000 and would seat 230 persons. On Monday October 2nd, 1876, the church was consecrated by the Bishop of Ripon with news of the ceremony published in The Bristol Mercury, dated Saturday October 7th 1876. It stated that the church was one of the finest ecclesiastical buildings erected in the country. Everyone who has seen the image states that the ghostly apparition is that of a monk, however, it also looks as if it is a person that has had a shroud put over them as if being hid, like a kidnapper would do with their prey when placing a sack over their head.

The church stands approximately 1.29 km / 4,234.39 ft to the north-east of Newby Hall which also boasts a dark history and sightings of apparitions. Mike N EWBY HALL Newby Hall is an 18th century property that stands beside the

River Ure in Skelton-on-Ure. It stands approximately 3.75 km / 2.33 miles from the

A1 motorway. The hall was built on lands once owned by the Crossland family, who sold the land to Sir Edward Blackett in the 1690’s, building the hall on the site of an older manor house.

A group who were visiting Newby Hall witnessed a group of people on the opposite side of the River Ure, who appeared to be ghosts.

According to the story they took a trip down to the river at a former ferry crossing point, and on the river opposite they saw two men giving a third man resuscitation. They called across to see if they needed help, but as they did the phantom men looked over at them, and then vanished. It was claimed that this could be on account of the Newby Hall Ferry Disaster which took place on February 4th , 1869, when Sir Charles Slingsby of Scriven

Park was taking part in the Stirrup Cup. It was said that Charles was in pursuit of a fox, that had previously evaded him, and the fox crossed the river, so Charles and his huntsmen friends decided to cross the river on a ferry. Back then such transportation would have consisted of nothing more than a few planks or logs held together with rope, and when the laden craft got halfway across the horses reared and the ferry tipped.

News of the tragedy broke on the morning of Friday February 5th, 1869, and was reported in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, which stated that the York and Ainsley foxhound hunt met in Ripon and as the fox crossed the

River Ure near Newby Hall, the property of

Lady Mary Vyner, a party of 13 gentleman, with their horses, entered the ferry boat to cross, but halfway across it tipped and all were thrown into the water.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS HEATON, CC BY-SA

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