Of Witches and Slaves, Lovers and Ghosts

Monday 16 February 2015 and we are starting out on the only paid excursion of the week, a trip to two of Jamaica's slave plantation great houses. After an album of Bob Marley and the Wailers on the coach sound system, we arrive at Rose Hall Great House.

Whilst our guide is sorting out our entry we have a quick look at the flora. There's a lot of it about...

This is where your palm oil comes from. Palm oil from the right makes you go and palm oil from the left...

The pond on the front lawn of the house is fed from above and behind the house via a series of cascades. Our guide turns up with our tickets and leads us off towards the house.

The house has been nicely restored - at one point it had got to be a bit of a mess... We will come out of the archway at the top of the stairs but for now we climb up the side and into the entrance on what seems to be the first floor - due to the slope of the hill it is actually the ground floor at the back of the house.

Rose Hall was owned by John Palmer, who took as his wife the diminutive Annie Patterson, an Anglo-Irish girl who had been orphaned in Haiti and brought up by her Voodoo priestess nanny. Well-versed in Voodoo, she became known as the cruel and sadistic White Witch of Rose Hall.

Tiring of her husband, she took to taking slaves as lovers, murdering them after three months or so and then moving onto another. Perhaps her husband caught her out, or perhaps the murders were becoming easier to her, for he suffered their fate, being poisoned by arsenic.

Another two wealthy husbands suffered the same fate, one being stabbed and the other strangled. She had them quickly buried on the estate in unmarked graves by gangs of slaves, who were themselves waylaid and killed on their way back from the burials to prevent them ever giving evidence as to where the graves were. Thus she hid her crimes from the authorities. In the hot climate it was natural for corpses to be buried quickly.

Each husband was murdered in a different room from this upper floor landing. Perhaps she didn't want their ghosts to warn their successors what was in store...!

Her current slave lover, a Voodoo priest called Takoo, learned that she wanted to marry another wealthy husband - one that was courting Takoo's granddaughter. He recognised that Annie had cursed her with a Voodoo spell and once the girl had withered and died, he took his revenge.

He killed Annie as she lay in this very bed. It has been claimed that several photos have shown her ghostly form, lying on it. She must have gone out this day though...

The slaves had the unenviable job of carrying the chamber pots away to empty them well away from the house. Bad enough in any climate but in a hot one, the task of carrying someone else's daily toilet contents would not be pleasant. And it had to be carried a long away from the house before being buried so that Annie did not have to suffer the smell on hot days. Annie had a strict, indeed a sadistic, manner towards her slaves. Slave children were trained from the age of six to carry water in a bucket weighing 10lbs when empty. If they spilt any they were whipped. By the age of ten they were strong enough to work on the plantation.

From this balcony vantage point Annie would issue her orders for each day and watch the slaves being punished - this being her form of entertainment. She had dungeons created in the cellars of the house where slaves were taken for more elaborate torture than mere whipping. She was not what you might call anyone's favourite auntie...

From the rear of the house a narrow series of steps leads into the ground and to the cellars and dungeons of the house. The dungeons are now toilets - well I suppose they were before as well, but you don't have to live in them any more...

From this room we entered another room where there was a bar and a cheerful old lad playing guitar and singing a medley of calypso tunes, about three quarters of which rang bells or sounded familiar. We had a drink and exited through the archway at the front of the house that we saw earlier.

We were led around the house to this tomb, the tomb of the murdered Annie. A voodoo ceremony was held over it at her burial, intended to trap her spirit within the tomb. Perhaps the Voodoo priest Takoo was distracted at having murdered his mistress and lover. The ceremony was not wholly successful as the ghost of the White Witch of Rose Hall has been seen floating round the house, lying in her bed and riding wildly on a galloping horse in the grounds...

We took our leave of Rose Hall Great House and headed off in the coach towards the second of the two plantation houses we were to see. A few Bob Marley songs later we arrive at a small tourist market. I saw a bright blue, yellow and red shirt (subtle it wasn't!) but she didn't have my size.

"You can try it on in there" she said hopefully, pointing into the two-foot recess of her hut.

I wagged my finger in front of her face. "No peeking!" I said, which elicited a huge cackle of laughter and made a show of trying the shirt on without attempting to button it, which would have required the intervention of one of Annie's Voodoo spells... I bought it anyway for $15, she was a nice old lady and was obviously very grateful at making a sale.

Next - we have an appointment at the Jamaican home of the Barretts of Wimpole Street.

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Hiding Priests at Thurnham Hall

This week my Mum decided she was taking us out to lunch and decided on Thurnham Hall near Lancaster.

The estate dates back to the 12th century but the hall is mostly 16th century restoration and additions. There is a chapel attached and a pele tower.

The hall has a number of rooms and apartments available to visitors and a restaurant in the wonderful hall with a powder blue panelled roof, oak panelling on the walls and stained glass in the windows. We had our granddaughter, Grace with us. She sneaked her own dinner in, but was quite willing to sample ours as well. In fact she took quite a liking to my chips, until she decided she'd had enough and the last mouthful was deposited onto my arm... Thanks, Grace...

We were allowed to have a look round and were told that the main point of interest - a priest hole - could be viewed as the apartment containing it had no one staying in it. We went up the staircase shown and through a set of doors that came from a sailing ship originally.

The priest hole dates from the days after Henry VIII had severed ties with the Catholic church and Lancashire was reluctant to turn Protestant. Priests faced dire consequences if they carried on celebrating the Catholic mass and a number of houses contained intricate ways of hiding them.

This tiny room is built into the back of the chimney of the fireplace in the adjoining room. It is accessed through this small hole in what is now an apartment kitchen. There is a seat - not much more than a narrow resting place and nothing else. No room to stand up fully, no room to move about. During a search the priest would have to hide perhaps for a couple of days in pitch dark and without making a sound. Fancy trying it? Me neither...

The entrance was hidden by means of an ingenious device. Opening the door to the room containing the access hole raised a screen of apparently solid stone, allowing access to the hole. When the priest was in the hole, the door was closed, the screen of masonry dropped back down, the priest removed a wooden peg and now opening the door left the screen in place. The priest was left to his fate, hoping that replacing the peg would allow the screen to be raised again!

My guide told me he had been on night porter duty and on one of his screens he saw that in the main hall the piano was missing and a priest was standing in its place. He (quite bravely I thought!) went down to the hall and there was the piano and no priest. On returning to his desk, the monitor still showed the priest and he took a photo on his phone of the screen image. He showed me this photo. It may have taken a bit of imagination to turn the blurred areas of light and dark into a priest... but I certainly did not see anything resembling a piano!

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Lording It Up in Scotland

I had a bit of a treat on Monday last week, as I got to stay the night in a castle, parts of which dated back to the 13th century.

Dalhousie Castle Hotel is indeed a genuine 100% real life castle, complete with big chunky stone walls, towers, battlements and suits of armour standing ready to chop you into bits as you pass.

After all my good intentions of using the camera this year, I'd left the thing at home, so all I have are some reather blurry photos taken on my phone I'm afraid. I found the castle easily enough after a trip up from Blackpool which included a rather hair-raising (ha! I wish!) trip over mountains covered in snow with long drops down to frozen bogs and pools at each side of the road. And at one point I was treated to a blizzard on a high unlit twisty road where only the occasional bear or wolf were the only living things besides myself. Oh - and the prat in a big 4x4, who zoomed past me in the white-out shrieking "Oot o' the way!"... As I rounded the next corner I could see that a band of nomads had set a similar vehicle on fire to keep warm at the foot of the hillside far below.

Once at the castle I met up with Clive who was running one of our workshops with me the following day. We went for a meal and both immediately decided on haggis for a starter - wonderful stuff! You vegetarians would love it if you only gave it a chance...

Having feasted and decided that there was no chance of a joust in the offing, we split up and went back to our rooms, feeling the walls carefully for any hint of secret passages. I lay in bed reading for a while, occasionally glancing up to see if any wild kilted ghosties were flitting through the walls... but it was all very quiet and free from any out of the ordinary happening.

The following morning I was up bright and early and once dressed, put a thick coat on to go outside to phone Fran as per usual. The thick walls of the castle, or perhaps just the remote location, mean that I had no signal inside. It didn't help perhaps that my room was at a very low level, but the shackle rings on the wall had kept me in a comfortable position for sleeping half upright and I soon got used to the glow of the brazier and the lack of windows and the drip of water running down the walls. Joke!!! The bedroom was very nice!

Anyway I was wandering about whilst talking to Fran - in an attempt to stay warm as much as anything else - and noticed a sign for a falconry.

They had some spectacular owls but it was still only just getting light and all I had was my phone so I just managed to take a photo of the snowy owl which was making little noises that I took to mean "You look tasty, stick your finger a bit closer..."

There was a huge owl in the next hutch (for want of a better word) that had beautiful orange eyes (I think it was trying to hypnotise me) but as soon as I turned away from it there was a bang, as though it had tried to rush me from behind and hit the wire of its hutch and when, startled, I looked round it had fallen off its perch and was pacing about on the floor, shaking its head and muttering "bloody hell!" in a dazed sort of way...

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Lunchtime in Lincoln

I've been to Lincoln today for an afternoon meeting with some people at the university and having arrived just before lunch, parked in the old part of the city and went to find something to eat there.

There were lots of school trips going on - everywhere were uniformed children with clipboards, looking for things they had on a list to find, drawing the castle or cathedral and somewhat bizarrely in a small group in an alley listening to a man dressed in a toga... Lucius Dressdus...

The castle is imposing and stands squarely facing the equally impressive gateway to the cathedral.

This is pretty much a building in its own right that has a gateway cut through it. It makes entering the Cathedral grounds something of an experience.

The cathedral houses one of the original copies of King John's Magna Carta document and a nearby pub is called the Magna Carta to commemorate the fact. Not that Clive and myself knew or thought to ask why it was called that when we called for a pint a few years ago whilst in the city to deliver a workshop...

There's an incredibly steep and long shopping street that leads from the castle and cathedral's hilltop to the modern city below.

They call it The Health Walk these days, but then every night you can take one of several ghost tours which probably list off all the people down the ages who have had heart attacks and died whilst walking back up...

Nearby is this very ancient Roman archway over the road - one of the original gates into the Roman city. It had a close call with a rather too large lorry in 1964, the damage costing over 1500 pounds to repair. And before anyone thinks that's not a lot, you could buy around 80 Mars Bars for a pound in 1964. A useful measure of worth, the Mars Bar, I always think!

The Haunted Hall of Wycoller

I said in a previous entry that Wycoller still had something to show us.

Wycoller Hall is a ruinous shell that only hints at the building it once was. But it has a romantic aspect, seen over the ford across the beck and it has a literary connection, a mystery, and a ghost story.

The view over the ford is better seen than described, so we'll start with that.

The ford - if not the cobbled surface that now leads into and out of it - is Wycoller Beck's oldest crossing. There are others of venerable age that you can find by clicking the link above.

Did I mention a ghost story? There are several actually. But one involves a West Indian woman who is sometimes seen standing by the ford. The story goes that a master of the hall visited the West Indies and married there, but on returning, regretted his haste and threw the unfortunate wife overboard on the way home. The spirit apparently swam all the way to England and upriver...

The hall was built by the Hartley family in the late 1500s. It was extended 200 years later incurring much debt. It is said that Squire Henry Cunliffe was hoping to attract a wealthy wife with the larger hall, but he was to be disappointed and left this world without heir or money but with the satisfaction of a man with debt and no close family to have to take it on!

Our second ghost story involves a phantom coach that draws up outside the hall. No one seems to know who it contains or what the purpose for the journey is.

Inside the hall is this splendid fireplace, with a seat running around the inside of the chimney so that guests can site all the way around the fire. A stairway entered to the left of the fireplace leads up around the back of the chimney to a room above and in front of the fireplace.

Up these steps runs our third spectre, a horseman - who courteously dismounts before running up the stairs - but who then commits a dastardly deed by murdering some unfortunate woman: a wife? a servant? an early exponent of girl-power? Sadly there is no historical evidence for any such murder at the hall, so either the ghost has lost his way and murders someone in frustration, or it's all a figment of someone's imagination...

To the right of the fireplace is our mystery. A keyhole-shaped opening in the wall with a space behind it. It could have been merely a wood store for the fire, but then why make it such an unusual shape? Or it has been suggested it could be a space for powdering wigs - the wig and powder being applied at arm's length and the narrowness of the opening lower down preventing too much powder from floating into the room covering everyone with a white dust...which could be another reason for the murder upstairs... "My best frock coat - ruined!!!"

The literary connection is of course that of Charlotte Brontë. She spent time here and didn't particularly enjoy it so we are told. The description of Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre would certainly match that of the hall, approached through woods of densely packed trees...

Brontë lovers flock here in pilgrimage and to nearby Haworth across the Yorkshire border. The land rises steeply behind the hall and is said to have inspired Wuthering Heights.

The hall is well worth a visit, being romantic, atmoshpheric and intruiging all at the same time.

Large versions of the photos: hall and ford, interior, fireplace detail

Ingrid Pitt's Newsletter

Ingrid's Spring Newsletter has just dropped through the letterbox today.

It has some news of a few events coming up - seems some Americans are coming over for a tour of our haunted mansions and manors sometime in September and want to fete our heroine! Hopefully not a fete worse than death... indeed not as they are dedicating their final night party to Ingrid! Ingrid's managed to get the ok for fan club members to attend! You'll need to ask her about it though, not me.

November's Fright Night event in Sheffield looks like being a two day night this year with a fancy dress parade, a dinner and a dealers' room.

Ingrid gives the horror story about her recent change of computer and there's an article about Memorabilia written by moi. She also mentions introducing me to Hazel O'Connor so we could "natter about music". She says "I think John enjoyed it." Yes he did actually!