GHOSTS

Bleeding Heart Yard

There is no certainty as to how Bleeding Heart Yard acquired its name. There is a story that the wife of Sir Christopher Hatton made a deal with the Devil to sell her soul in return for the advancement of her husband's career. The peer received a major promotion and a party was arranged. However, she did not invite the Devil, which deeply antagonised him. On the morning following the event, she had disappeared and all that could be found was a human heart.

The problem with this tale is that the knight never married.

Location: Bleeding Heart Yard, EC1N 8SJ (purple, yellow)

The Cultural Place of Ghosts

It can be argued that the depiction of ghosts in art and literature had been derived from the era in which the work was made. In the 14^thC and 15^thC they were held to dwell in purgatory. Following the Reformation, the Church of England refused to accept the existence of purgatory. However, it continued to linger in the popular imagination. In Hamlet his father declares that he was doomed for a certain term to walk the night. In the 17^thC they became much more human, capable of holding emotion for the feeling; John Donne's poetry reflects. The Enlightenment was in danger of killing them off. Samuel Johnson declared that All argument is against it; but all belief is for it. However, for the Romantics they became figures of renewal. In the 19^thC they became more vigorous. The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 to furnish rationale explanations for the phantasmagorical. Increasingly, sceptical views were expressed about whether or not they existed

Flemish Spelling

In late Medieval ghost was spelt gost. The h was added by Flemish typesetters whom William Caxton employed. The word in Flemish being gheest.

See Also: PRINTING William Caxton

The Ghost Club

The Ghost Club was founded in 1862. Its member included Charles Dickens, W.B. Yeats, and Siegfried Sassoon. The body was revived through the efforts of Peter Underwood (1923-2014), who was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research. In 1993 a large proportion of the organisation's members broke away and formed the Ghost Club Society under the leadership of Underwood.

Website: www.ghostclub.org.uk

The Greenwich Ghost

In 1967 a clergyman who was visiting The Queen's House Museum in Greenwich photographed an image scurrying up the building's circular staircase. The image, which was far too good to be true, became known as the Greenwich Ghost. It has not been satisfactorily explained.

Location: The Queen's House, Greenwich Palace, Romney Road, SE10 9NF

Website: www.rmg.co.uk/queens-house

Marley's Ghost

In 1842 Charles Dickens visited the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh. There he saw men in chains. This may have informed his description of Marley's ghost in A Christmas Carol (1843).

Poltergeist

In the 1920s the word poltergeist entered the English language after a Romanian girl who was supposedly haunted by a poltergeist came to Britain to be experimented upon. By the late 1930s they had become commonplace. The popular press s coverage of them was disapproving in tone, holding them up as anti-social ghosts rather than seemly historical ones that haunted stately homes.

Nandor Fodor (1895-1964) wanted ghosts to exist but he was also a sceptical, pragmatic of integrity. During the 1930s, under his leadership, the International Institute for Psychical Research had disproven a series a number of hauntings but proven none. Infra-red photography had enabled him to expose a number of fraudulent mediums.

Location: 98 Beverstone Road, Thornton Heath, CR7 7LD

The Enfield Poltergeist

In the late 1970s the Hodgson family consisted of a divorced mother and her four children. They claimed that there was a ghost in their council house in Enfield. Guy Lyon Playfair (1935-2018) and Maurice Grosse of the Society for Psychical Research investigated the matter. In late 1977 and early 1978 Playfair made over a 180 visits to the house and spent 25 nights there. He became convinced that there was a poltergeist present. He amassed 140 hours of recordings and took notes that became a 500-page typescript. The latter acted as the basis for This House Is Haunted (1980), which proved to be a best-seller. It became the basis for a number of movies and television dramas. Subsequently, one of the children did admit that some of what he had experienced had been faked, he himself noted that the ghost had seemed to be most active when no one was looking.

Location: 284 Green Street, Brimsdown, EN3 7LR

Sheet Ghosts

The Burial In Woollen Act of 1678 was intended to stimulate the woollen goods trade. It required that corpses, prior to burial, should be wrapped in woollen shroud. These were undyed and so were pale. This may have played a role in establishing the image of a ghost as being an animated sheet with a face.

Arabella Stuart

Arabella Stuart (1575-1615) was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth. She antagonised her kinswoman by marrying without having first secured royal permission to do so. She starved to death while a prisoner in the Tower of London. Her ghost is reputed to haunt the Queen s House.

William Terriss

In 1897 the popular actor William Terriss (b.1847) was killed by Richard Arthur Prince, a fellow actor whom he had given considerable help to.

Terriss is reputed to be the ghost of Covent Garden Underground Station. It used to very quiet before the rebirth of the district.

Location: Maiden Lane, WC2E 7JS. A plaque opposite No. 29. (brown, blue)

Website: http://www.lwtheatres/theatres/adelphi

David Backhouse 2024