Mystery on the Mound

As most readers will know, AudlemOnline Editor, Bob Cartwright, has recently undergone a major operation. During the recovery period he has had opportunity to let his imagination rip, and this two-part Ghost Story is the result.
The second part will be published tomorrow,

A few months ago, a couple of teenagers, enjoying some peace and quiet under the Buttermarket on one of the few wind-free evenings this Autumn, both felt a somewhat eerie presence that neither had ever experienced before.

Being typical up-to-date youngsters, they both had 'Ghostcheckers' Apps on their iPhone 6s phones and checked out the situation. And yes, both registered something unexplained in the immediate vicinity.

They were far from frightened but intrigued, so much so that they mentioned their experience to their parents on returning home, one of whom who passed on the information to AudlemOnline. Rather than simply publishing a story about a possible ghostly experience, I, the editor, was intrigued enough to investigate further.

While sceptical about much in life, I do not dismiss ghosts out of hand. I recall a story told by my mother, not a woman given to flights of fancy or anything spiritual, while I was a young teenager. She had been away for a week as her mother, my grandmother, was known to be dying. About three o'clock in the morning one night, my mother told how my grandmother had appeared at the foot of my mother's bed and they had a lengthy discussion. Early next morning came the news that my grandmother had died during the night in the nearby hospital – at a little before three in the morning.

I am sure this is a common enough tale but there have been others. Back in my twenties, I was having dinner one night with the advertising director of the Manchester Evening News, as down to earth a character as you could wish to meet. He had just returned from a very strange family holiday in the west of Scotland where he had rented an old house in a very remote spot.

As he drove down the narrow lane towards the property, he saw an elderly man, a typical crofter, standing by the road and stopped to ask him if he was on the right road to the house in question. "You are staying there, are you?" asked the man. On hearing that was the case, the old man simply said: "See you again very soon," and wandered off.

On inspecting the property, the whole family, and in particular their dog, noticed that one bedroom in the old house was noticeably cold. Indeed, the dog wouldn't even step into the room but quietly growled its discontent.

That night, my friend described how he had difficulty in sleeping and kept on hearing noises that seem to come from the cold room. Few others in the family had slept either and all had heard unexplained sounds in the night.

The second night into the holiday, my friend heard so many noises that he decided to investigate and, looking out of the window saw an amazing sight, a man being tied to what seemed like a wooden stretcher attached to a horse, before being dragged away.

The holiday was aborted the next morning and as they drove past the old man he waved them down. "Are you off, then?" he asked, as if hardly surprised. Yes, came the confirmation with a comment about the house being haunted. "You saw the man being dragged away behind the horse then. Most visitors there do" before explaining what lay behind the nightly vision.

"It all goes back to 1745 and the troops were seeking out any remaining rebellious Jacobites and found a man hiding in that house in one of the bedrooms – it's always cold in there to this day. They tied him to a stretcher and then dragged him many a mile before he was executed for treason, a very nasty end. But he seems to have returned to the house where he was caught and has never really left it since."

The entire story was told with a straight face and in an earnest tone. I could sense, and others at the table felt the same, this was exactly the way it had happened with no elaboration or anything hidden or added to a piece of real history in that remote corner of the Highlands. I was left in no doubt about the veracity of the story.

One final story of experiences with ghosts. About thirty years ago, when I was working up on the west coast of Cumbria, I became friendly with the Gordon Duff Pennington family of Muncaster Castle. They sometimes asked me to stay if I was up in that part of the world where I found that two ghosts famously walked the corridors of the ancient castle. One is of the well-known court jester Tom Thumb and the other of a young woman. They have been seen many times by a wide range of people.

A few months later, I commissioned a tourist film about West Cumbria and included a scene of the young woman walking the corridors which was filmed brilliantly by the director. That may have been faked but I have no reason to suspect the many sightings at Muncaster Castle are anything but genuine.

Add to all these a local incident which my son Spencer went to investigate about twenty five years ago. Some will recall the reports of a poltergeist at Lightwood Green that was reportedly throwing stones at passing cars. Spencer and a friend saw the stones being thrown and despite trying everything to show this was not some so-called poltergeist at work, they came away convinced something very strange, and not capable of being faked, was going on.

As you can see, I am inclined to believe ghosts could well exist, and I was well and truly leaning to the possible existence of the newly discovered, well possibly discovered, ghost on the mound in Audlem and all the more determined to investigate the case fully.

So, having an open mind about the possibility that a ghost may have been detected on the church mound, how to proceed? Fortunately, years ago in Liverpool, where I worked in the late seventies on The Liverpool Echo, a colleague gained a considerable reputation, indeed he eventually went professional, in para-normal activities.

Not only was he involved in a detailed research project with a leading university into his ability to forecast events – although unfortunately this did not extend to the following day's results at Haydock Park and Aintree – but his main area of expertise was regression. This a process that takes living people back to earlier lives they had lived, often hundreds of years ago.

Indeed, on one occasion, his ability to foresee events may have saved me from a very nasty incident. I was sitting in my office one morning when he rang me. "Are you due to be in a tall white building any time today?" he asked. "Yes, I'm off to Granada TV's offices in Manchester shortly," I responded. "Don't go, I can see a deadly fire," he said. "Don't go."

I took him so seriously, I cancelled my meeting. A few hours later, just as I might have been seated there, a major fire broke out in the reception area at Granada!

After his numerous appearances on television, when a new weekly magazine came out in 1979, launched by Sir James Goldsmith and called 'Now', the main article in the first three issues was a scientific examination by a team of experts into the work of my colleague – his name was Joe, by the way.

To my surprise and pleasure, the scientists gave him a thumbs up in the sense that they could not find any evidence of chicanery and said that his work seemed be genuine although in this sort of area it is extremely hard to be 100% sure of anything. But, overall, he had come out of the investigation extremely well.

So would I be able to find him after all these years, and, if so, would he be prepared to help me?

To be continued, and concluded, tomorrow.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.