FT269

A welcome sign that there exists a limit to popular credulity over ghostly images captured on camera is shown by the flood of adverse comm­ents in the wake of press coverage of a film clip taken at a Cumbrian pub. The security camera footage was recorded at The Wolfe pub at Little Dockray, near Penrith. It shows what many believe is simply an insect crawling across the lens. Nonetheless, eschewing logic and reason, several local newspapers and one national have been happy to promote the film as evidence of ghostly activity, both at the pub and in the adjoining premises next door, a branch of Thomas Cook travel agents.

Local paper the News and Star (14 Sept 2010) breathlessly described the film taken in the pub as “a bizarre 35-second sequence, recorded by a CCTV camera in the dead of night… [in which] a ball of light is seen descending through the ceiling, its outline pulsating as it moves around… Suddenly, the light ball swoops upwards, disappearing through the ceiling, its topmost part moment­arily assuming the likeness of a face.”
Journalists uncritically embraced the interpretation of pub manager Andrew Bateman, 38, who was quoted as saying he and a friend noticed the image when reviewing footage taken on 1 September 2010. “It was recording at 18 minutes past midnight, and the pub was in darkness… I was about to turn it off when my friend spotted something strange: this glowing shape just comes down from the ceiling into the lounge and floats around the room. At one point, it looks as if it’s cleaning tables.”

In support of a paranormal explanation, Bateman cited the strange behaviour of his pet terrier Dudley who becomes fearful when passing through the pub’s doors. The local press also drew attention to a strange incident supposedly captured on a CCTV camera at the branch of Thomas Cook next-door. This showed a computer mouse moving across a desk and a light as a computer monitor switches on – and within seconds a large sign falls from the shop’s front window. Events have unnerved staff at the travel agents, with Amy Dryden, 22, saying she has been losing sleep since viewing the clips. “When [I’m] upstairs where we keep our brochures, I often get the feeling that I’m being watched,” she said. “I was absolutely gobsmacked when I saw the CCTV from the pub.” A lengthy report from a medium who visited The Wolfe was also offered in support of a haunting, despite the fact that her statements were incapable of corroboration. Both Bateman and staff at the travel agent see significance in the fact that both buildings are believed to occupy the site of a former funeral parlour.

As one might expect, such sensational reporting attracted a great deal of online comm­ent from readers (far exceeding responses concerning coverage of more pressing local issues). For many, the ghostly interpretation of the clip was a step too far, generating scathing remarks and dismissal of the image as nothing more than a crawling insect. Several online correspondents maintained they had personally worked with CCTV and had seen many such effects, all attributable to insects crawling over the camera lens. Other critics made suggestions that the image was a spider or a computer-generated hoax. Many more comments in similar vein appeared when the national press took up the case. The Sun unblushingly repeated the ghost claim, but Metro considered that Bateman’s further plans to call in a priest were “a bit of an over-reaction” for what was “obviously a fly on the camera lens”.

If anything, the local connection drawn with a funeral parlour rather diminishes than increases the likelihood of there being a genuine haunting. Premises used by undertakers and funeral parlours are singularly lacking in reports of ghosts. At a Folklore Society Conference on the theme of death organised by Jeremy Harte at Brompton Cemetery Chapel in September 2010, one long-serving undertaker remarked that he could not recall a single claim of a ghost experienced by an undertaker or mortician, despite 49 years in the business. With poss­ible exceptions such as the apparition of an old lady reportedly haunting a house at Drakes Broughton, Worcestershire, formerly used by a coffin maker, reliable accounts of phantoms at premises associated with the funeral trade seem few and far between. Sun, News and Star (Penrith), 14 Sept; Metro, 15 Sept; Whitehaven News, 18 Sept 2010; video clip at http://tinyurl.com/27h69kc and http://tinyurl.com/369pant (both News and Star); Andrew Green in ‘Our Haunted Kingdom’ (1973).

Insects feature in a small fraction of ghost stories, but may on occasion also provide an explanation for certain reported phenomena. A ghostly tortoiseshell butterfly is said to haunt the Theatre Royal in Bath during the pantomime season. Its origins are traced to a Christmas pantomime in 1948 when performers were dressed in tortoiseshell butter­fly costumes. A live tortoiseshell butterfly was suddenly seen fluttering through the theatre; it is said to return every Christmas ((FT150:20); Keith Poole: Britain’s Haunted Heritage, 1989).

Bournemouth’s Pavilion Theatre is said to have a ghostly red admiral butterfly that appears and flies around the auditorium; “…it has been trodden on before and still survived” was the claim made on the Bournemouth Borough Council website in 2008. It is allegedly one of several ghosts at the theatre, including the shade of a woman known as Emily, believed to be an actress who collapsed on stage in the 1930s.

Simon Bagnall, Pavilion Stage Manager, said: “We hear constant stories of sightings. There appears to be a cheeky ghost – one member of staff claimed to have been chased up the corridor; another reported seeing things thrown around on stage when no one was there; others have heard someone walking across the empty stage.” The building was also investigated by a clairvoyant whose description of a woman in period costume matched reported ghost sightings from staff. http://tinyurl.com/2vhjsdr (bournemouth.gov.uk).

A university lecturer witnessed poltergeist phenomena and the appearance of “queer moths” at a property in Cape Cod in 1934 and wrote about them under the pseudonym Harlan Jacobs for American magazines (Harper’s Magazine, Nov 1934; Reader’s Digest, Mar 1940).

Britain’s most active ghost hunter for 60 years, Elliot O’Donnell (1873–1965), claimed that black beetles proliferate in haunted houses, but his reliability as a scientific observer may be in question, despite his voluminous output of books and journalism over many decades. O’Donnell claimed to have seen a strange manlike shadow and a sinister swarm of flies “curiously black and large and nasty” during a nocturnal vigil in South Mimms churchyard, Hertfordshire, while waiting for the apparition of a White Lady. Locals believed the phenomena were linked with human bodies found in a nearby area of marshy ground known as “the Wash” in 1861 and 1930. (Elliot O’Donnell: Haunted Churches, 1939).

A report in the Daily Telegraph (21 Oct 2010) runs: “HAUNTED VILLAGE HIT BY ‘PLAGUE’ OF FLIES. Pluckley in Kent, which claims to be Britain’s ‘most haunted’ village, has been invaded by swarms of tiny flies, claimed by some residents to be numbered in their millions. The parish council is to hold a meeting to discuss how to tackle the flies”.

Swarms of black flies featured in the discredited story of the Amityville Horror and a cloud of gnats was held responsible for a ghostly image on a picture taken by photo­grapher Thurston Hopkins on the site of Borley Rectory in the summer of 1954 and published in Picture Post on 1 January 1955 (Philip Paul: Some Unseen Power, 1985).

A strange insect was reported in the garden of Borley Rectory in August 1938, with an artist’s impression appearing in Harry Price’s The Most Haunted House in England (1940). The witness was a Mrs Margaret E Wilson, an artist who went to paint a picture of the rectory. She was startled by a strange flying insect accom­panied by a wasp. She described the body of the mysterious insect as at least 3in (7.6cm) long with large eyes like “bloomy black grapes”. She struck at it, knocking it into the grass but was unable to find it. Peter Underwood, Eddie Brazil and Paul Adams, the authors of the recent The Borley Rectory Companion (2009), cite the experience as an example of ‘Borley hysteria’ and consider it was deliberately exploited by Harry Price for sensation.

The biggest survey ever undertaken into hallucinations was by the Society for Psychical Research and published as the Report on the Census of Hallucinations in 1894. It contains one account of a ghostly insect recorded from a lady formerly living in Brazil and only identified as ‘Mrs S’:

“I once dreamed that a large black butterfly was hovering over my husband as he lay in bed. I awoke and saw, by the aid of the nightlight, the butterfly of my dream fluttering over him. I called the servant and together we tried to kill it. I struck at it with my handkerchief and apparently succeeded in my object, but all our endeavours to find the body of the insect failed. The doors and windows were all closed and it could not have escaped. It was very large and could not have remained invisible… We are of the opinion, as we searched so carefully, that it was merely hallucinatory.”

Commenting on the account for the Census, a Professor Alexander stated: “According to a superstition widely spread in Brazil, the black butterfly is supposed to be a sign of death. I have heard several tales similar to the account given [here] that tend to show that hallucinations are often shaped by popular beliefs.”

In Colombia, a black butterfly known as the mariposa negra is popularly considered a phantom of ill omen; belief in the phenomenon is still alive today in city of Cali. (Carolina Man­osca, pers. comm. 7 Oct 2010).

Noises created by insects have been blamed for causing ghost reports, including the sound of deathwatch beetle in old properties. The mysterious sounds of a ticking clock at a house in Brighton, first heard in 1979, were eventually pinned down seven years later to noises caused by the psocid Trogium pulsa­torium, a species of book louse. This was after the attentions of four mediums, a clock-maker and fellow horologists, some pest control experts, entom­ologists, an exorcism by a canon from the Church of England and an investigation by the members of the Society for Psychical Research. (Peter Eastham: “Ticking off a poltergeist” JSPR 1979 v.55, 1988–89, pp80–83.)

Insect noises might conceivably lie behind breathing sounds heard by Ian Wilson and his wife at Abercrombie House, Bathurst, New South Wales, on 30 January 1994, described in his excellent book In Search of Ghosts (1995). After going to bed and switching out the light, he and his wife heard the sound of gentle breathing, which ceased when they switched on the bedside lamp, but resumed when the light was switched off again. The sound appeared to emanate at head height above floor space which was occupied by a wooden clothes-airer. The sound ceased completely when Wilson offered a silent prayer to free a spirit. Similar experiences in South Africa have been caused by geckos, and the wife of his host suggested that a possum might have been responsible. Regarding the proximity of the clothes-airer, Wilson comments: “Our invisible intruder, therefore, would have had to have been in the middle of this, apparently able to pass right through it. A possum would have had to be hovering in mid-air…” Might an insect (or insects) be postulated as a better candidate for a biological cause of the noises?

Fireflies have been proposed as one explan­ation for cases of phantom lights, particularly those reported in tropical countries. (See MJ Walhouse: “Ghostly Lights” in Folklore v.5, no.4, Dec 1894, 293–299.) However, tropical fireflies are doubtful as a proposed cause of a glowing light the size of a basketball seen by the late Jim Frost in Ladywood Lane, Badwell Ash, mid-Suffolk, in November 1968. Local sceptics also contemplated marsh gas or after-images on the retina caused by staring at the light from a cottage window as alternative explanations to luminous insects. These ideas were robustly rejected by Mr Frost at the time. Investigating the story further, I have found one other witness who reported seeing a swinging lantern held by a monk-like figure during the mid-1960s, suggesting an archetypal apparition. (Bury Free Press, 7+14 Sept 1969; Mick Poulter of Great Ashfield, pers. comm. 6 May 2006.)