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It was one of those changes of direction that brought Ian Davison to Kent in 1932. For years he had been a successful actor and now he wanted to retire from the stage. He wanted to be out of London, away from the bustle of city life and insistent demands of the theatre. At heart, he knew he belonged to the country and what he had in mind was a property in some secluded rural retreat where he could farm a little, garden a little, write and entertain his many friends. And one day, after he had for months scoured the county for a suitable place, he lit on Branden Farm just outside Sissinghurst.
Yet Branden must have been among the least prepossessing of the properties that he had looked at. There was about it a general air of neglect. The outside of the house was overgrown with nettles and brambles; and weatherboarding and palings were rotten; ivy had loosened many of the tiles of the fine old barn; the oast house was in a similar state of disrepair and the cowsheds had ugly, rusted, corrugated iron roofs. The whole place, with its air of abandonment, was rat-infested. Outside in the garden area lay heaps of tangled iron. Inside, the house was in need of total refurbishment. The building was well over 400 years old and it looked as if in all that time little had been done to keep it in good repair. It was appalling, and yet Ian Davison jumped at it. It was just the sort of challenge he felt that he needed at this stage of his life. He would work at it, make it truly his.
Over the next several years Davison was to transform the once-derelict farm into a wonderful home. He had seen the potential beauty of Branden and all the neglect and squalor had not obscured from him what could be done. In the end there was a house, beautiful both inside and out. It was a creation to be proud of. The once overgrown garden now grew primroses and daffodils, primulas and violets, camellias and lupins, and Davison's special favourites, irises, blue, gold, purple and bronze. Throughout the year there was always something in the garden to attract the eye.
And the orchard flourished, too, with its apple and cherry trees and its greengages and nuts. 'My land,' said the supremely happy Davison, 'is rich with trees.' And to further please him there were the dogs and cats, the cattle, chickens, pigs and red Carneaux pigeons. It was a tremendous achievement to have created so much. And an even greater achievement to have done so when plagued in his first two years in the house by the most malevolent and frightening apparitions.
Right from his arrival at Branden in April 1932 they made their presence known. What was remarkable is the courageous fashion in which the former actor faced up to to manifestations that would have driven many another man back to London. Ian Davison's principle response was to take an interest in the whole experience and, even more unusual, to feel some sympathy for two of the ghosts when once he understood their story.
It began on the first night. There was a tapping at the window. Yet when Davison looked out there was no sign of anyone. Certainly it was not a case of a tree branch knocking on the window panes. There was no explanation but Davison, a man who always accepted quite philosophically that there were things in life and nature beyond rational explanation, remained unshaken by the noise. Another evening he heard footsteps outside, then the sound of two men running. Suddenly, at the north end of the house was a crash. The chimney was under repair at the time and Davison wondered if it had fallen. Yet when he investigated, there was sign neither of damage to any part of the house nor of any intruders. Other nights he heard other sounds: once, a wail of heart-rendering agony; another time, a crash as if a heavy piece of furniture had fallen inside the house. In his bedroom at night Davison frequently heard heavy footsteps when he knew there was no one else in the house.
There was something decidedly disconcerting about the place. Davison agreed with his many visitors that there was always the sense that one was being watched, always that uncertain feeling of someone just beyond the corner of the eye, someone waiting. People staying at Branden frequently felt enervated, felt as though their strength was being sapped. Some visitors experience the most fearful dreams in which they were being strangled. One visitor told Davison that for several days after such a dream she felt completely exhausted.
In fact the whole house had a discordant air about it, something menacing. The smaller of the two downstairs rooms was usually cold even when the fire had been on all day. Yet on some occasions it was unaccountably hot, overpoweringly so. Sometimes in that room Davison and others felt dizzy, on occasion they even fainted. Some experienced extreme tiredness. Something was very obviously wrong but Davison was unable to account for it. The atmosphere of the small room with its changes of temperature, its odd noises, its musty smell, was ultimately so bad that it could be used only as a box room.
But then the larger ground floor room was equally mystifying. One evening, one of Davison's friends dozed off and then woke with a start. He felt that he had been seized by the neck from behind; he felt that someone had tried to strangle him. Other evenings, both Davison and another of his friends fainted in the room, which had become suddenly hot and airless. And once, in the dust on the table in this room, there was the imprint of a claw-like hand.
The first ghost appeared to a man and his wife, guests sleeping in Davison's attic bedroom. A woman carrying what appeared to be a tumbler, passed through the room. The husband, receiving no reply from the intruder, threw a slipper at her. She promptly disappeared through the wall. Some weeks later at about four o'clock one afternoon, Davison saw the woman for himself in his bedroom. She was wearing grey, a sad-looking creature, simple-looking perhaps. The woman was slightly bent and it seemed as if she was searching for something on the ground. Yet her appearance was so pitiful and unfrightening that Davison, who was remarkably matter of fact as far as apparitions were concerned, felt nothing but an intense pity for her.
After the sad woman's arrival came others, shadows some of them, some vaguely discerned humans, who appeared most often in the large room downstairs although they were seen at random in other parts of the house. One, the most alarming, would come through the wall of the large downstairs room, float across the room and disappear into the fireplace. His entry, usually in mid-evening, was marked by a sudden fall in temperature. He usually stayed in the room for about five minutes. Sometimes his arrival was preceded by a phantom cat which could never be touched.
Davison's first real encounter with this most frightening phantom, however, was in his bedroom. One night he was awakened by a visitor's dog scratching at his bedroom door. He let the animal into the room where it joined Davison's own Great Dane, Peter. Both dogs were clearly disturbed and anxious. Davison, fresh from sleep, then realised that he was sweating profusely in quite unbearable heat. He recalled that when he was awakened by by the dog he had been dreaming that the house was on fire. Was it really on fire? Surely it must be, for outside it was freezing, snowing, in fact. Such heat could come only from a fire. Then the door to the bedroom became suddenly transparent, appearing to melt away before his eyes, and Davison saw in front of him 'the foulest looking man I have ever set eyes on.'
Davison's visitor, dressed in a curious costume of bright green, brown and red, stood over six feet tall but what arrested the attention was the man's fierce look of hatred and his revolting face with its thick grinning lips and enormous yellow teeth. Pulling himself together Davison yelled: 'Who are you - a fiend of hell?' The apparition replied with a laugh and disappeared as suddenly as he had come. But it was he who so often came into the large room in the evenings.
One of Davison's many friends was Ronald Kaulbeck, explorer and psychic investigator, who was intensely interested in what he was told about the mysterious events at Branden and he agreed to stay there to see if he could cast any light on what was occurring. He was to say later that in the small room he experienced raw fear of a kind he had never known before. Sitting in the room one evening he suddenly started gasping for breath and grasping at his neck. Three others in the room saw around Kaulbeck's neck some faint shadow. A force of some kind was trying to choke him. It took the three others all their strength to release Kaulbeck from whatever it was that was aiming to kill him. Without any doubt the house was not simply occupied by apparitions, but by a wholly malevolent demonic power.
Ronald Kaulbeck, unlike some other guests, was undeterred by this terrifying experience. He stayed on at Branden, his curiosity overcoming any sense of self-preservation. In time, he and Davison came to recognise the three principle figures among several who haunted the house. First, there was the sad little woman; then there was a short, thick-set, ugly little man who Davison somehow felt was also unhappy; and there was the tall horrifying man, who was most obviously the source of the evil which permeated Branden Farm.
Over the months Davison, keen to get to the bottom of the house's ills and to know the origins of the apparitions, enlisted the assistance of several mediums and spiritualists. One of them told Davison that Branden housed the spirits of people who had belonged to a black magic coven and who had met there regularly long years ago. She warned him that the spirits were trying to get rid of him in order to possess the house exclusively. If Davison quit Branden now, he was told, it would never again be habitable. If he stayed on in the face of such terrifying manifestations, if he held on to his courage, they and their evil would go in five months. Davison was warned, however, that he was in a highly dangerous situation. If he stayed on he would have to be prepared for the unexpected, and when the test came, he must not yield to fear.
The alignment of the house, each wall facing a cardinal point of the compass foresquare, was one which appealed to those who indulged in black magic. Furthermore, it was guarded north and west by ponds. The south, in particular, was protected by a rank smelling ditch, as in black magic rituals, the magician faced north. A former ditch had possibly protected the east side of the house. Magic circles guarded the entrances and places where sacrifices, human or animal were made.
The medium who alerted Davison to the situation also identified his ghosts. The principal apparition, the most terrifying, was George Tarver, who must have occupied Branden, perhaps as early as the 16th century. He was a glover who inherited the property from his father, a physician. George Tarver was steeped in black magic, the Grand Master of the coven which met at his house. (It may be recalled that in the 17th century five female witches at nearby Cranbrook were burned, and two others from Goudhurst were sentenced to die for keeping 'an evil and wicked spirit in the likeness of a black dog with the intent and purpose that they, by the aid and help of the said evil and wicked spirit, certain evil and devilish arts called Witchcrafts might use against the public peace.') Certainly witchcraft was not unknown in Kent!
Tarver's coven included his mistress, who was driven mad when Tarver used her baby as a human sacrifice. Then, tiring of her, he suffocated her and burned her body in the small downstairs room. Another member of the coven, the small ugly man, now identified as Hunter, disgusted at the turn of events, protested, and he too was strangled by the Grand Master and buried in the grounds. The members of the coven who had enjoyed the rituals, the defiance of Christianity, the magic making, the sex orgies, drew the line at what was now happening. They had not become Satanists to commit murder. Something must be done for all of this was getting out of hand. Desperate measures were needed. The coven members took them. They laid hands on their master and they hanged him from a beam in the large room.
Knowing that grisly history can scarcely have reassured Davison but, nevertheless, he stuck to Branden. By day he went on renovating the house, working the garden, looking after the orchard, developing the small farm. At night, he lived with the apparitions.
And then, at last, it all came to an end. It was a late afternoon when the unsuspecting Davison went up to the bathroom for the most momentous of his encounters with Tarver. This day, only a few feet away from the bathroom door, Tarver was waiting, with his menacing smile and on this occasion he looked fearsomely strong. Davison, surprised to see him there, recoiled, afraid of the sheer evil power before him. He wanted to escape, to run down the stairs away from this terrifying figure. Yet, just in time he recalled the medium's massage. He must be resolute; when the test came he must not yield to his fear. Steeling himself he faced Tarver. 'You must get out of my way! This house is mine! My will is stronger than yours! It does not matter what holds you here! You must leave! Go!' What courage that must have taken. And Tarver then disappeared, simply faded into the wall. It was his last appearance in human form. The ghost cat, too, which had often preceded or accompanied him, never appeared thereafter.
Three days later the woman appeared in the bathroom and for the first time she looked up at Davison, looked into his face, and she smiled. No longer did she appear sad and downcast. She even looked younger. She stretched out her arms towards him. It was if she were saying goodbye. He never saw her again.
As for Hunter, he too said a farewell, standing by Davison's bed one night for twenty minutes. But he seemed even sadder than at any other time. At one point he bent over until he almost touched Davison's face. And Davison, who had never felt any fear of Hunter, but for whom he had a genuine sympathy, spoke to the apparition, asking if he could help him. At which Hunter, without making any kind of response disappeared, never to be seen again.
The ghosts at Branden Farm still for a time manifested themselves in the form of shadows, but their appearance became less and less frequent. Finally, they ceased to show themselves at all. The house was at peace.
As for Ian Davison, he stayed on at Branden, developing it into a fine house and garden. He had no regrets about choosing it. It was the right place for him in spite of all that had occurred.