Asked if he actually believed in ghosts, M.R. James, author of the greatest ghost stories in the English language, answered equivocally that he was prepared to consider anything for which there was sufficient evidence.
It’s the time of year when Monty James used to invite students to his rooms at King’s College, Cambridge, and turn down the lights. The students would listen to him read the terrifyingly chilly tales that he created every winter, set in the sedate surroundings of cathedral cloisters, country houses and East Anglian seaside towns. Now that I too live in an ancient cathedral city, I also want to see a ghost.
It’s a desire that seems to be shared by millions of people, even in our age of overcrowded urban high-rises and 24-hour electric entertainment: the need to feel deliciously scared by spectral visitations from beyond the grave appears to be a human archetype with a very long shelf life.
The TV presenter Danny Robins, for example, has tapped into our lasting fascination with the supernatural with his show Uncanny, in which ordinary people recount their spooky experiences, which are then dissected and explored by a professional sceptic and a convinced believer. Susan Hill’s seriously scary play The Woman in Black ran for 33 years on the London stage and was seen by more than seven million people.
There’s no shortage of sensible-sounding witnesses coming forward to recount to Robins blood-curdling stories of their own allegedly true experiences of the supernatural, and these often sound so convincing that, even as a naturally cynical doubter, I am seriously impressed.
When I was writing a history of the Tower of London, I was privileged to spend a night in that grim fortress – probably the place that has seen more violent deaths, gruesome cruelty and sheer volumes of human suffering than any other site in England.
It’s a place where the echoes of inhuman shrieks still linger, and every twisted staircase is shadowed by the presence of those whose earthly journeys ended here. However, wandering alone at night where thousands of tourists throng by day, although I felt the sinister, numinous spirit of the place, I was spared the actual sight of a headless Anne Boleyn or the sounds of the stifled dying sobs of the murdered little princes.
I have, though, experienced some uncanny events. I lived for 18 years with a woman whose family thought they were seers – blessed or cursed with powers that made them susceptible to second sight and a special sensitivity to the supernatural.
A rationalist would explain all these aural and visual phenomena as hallucinations
While living in an old house with her, I was frequently summoned from our bedroom to the ground floor, where our radio would mysteriously turn itself on at the midnight hour. Her six-year-old son complained that his bedroom was often visited by ‘an old man with a stick’ who then disappeared. By chance we discovered that the deceased former owner of the antique warehouse next door had been – yes, you’ve guessed it – an old man with a stick.
We moved to a larger but equally aged house, and the unexplained odd occurrences kept happening. Poltergeist activity was a regular event, involving efforts to free caged birds kept by the same stepson who had seen the stick man. When the relationship broke up and I left the house, such activity ceased.
My present partner lives in a tiny village cottage and is also subject to bizarre and unwanted visits. Her front door opens on its own and is followed by the sound of heavy footsteps climbing the stairs; her son sees an unknown man in Victorian clothes sitting on his bed, and the noise of a weeping child is sometimes heard.
A rationalist would explain all these aural and visual phenomena as hallucinations. I prefer to think that energies have been trapped in some space-time continuum which appear to some specially gifted people. But whatever the explanation, whenever I walk through the dark and deserted cathedral cloisters en route to evensong, I find myself looking over my shoulder – half in fear but half in hope.
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