The Paranormal

Strange Burials

Some people are born with such advantages that it is difficult not to feel the occasional pang of envy at their fine homes, their evident riches, the apparent ease with which their lives are conducted. They seem not to have to face the minor encumbrances of life. How fortunate they are! And that experience reminds us that even those with the greatest advantages are, like the rest of us, prey to anxieties, beset by the devils of everyday life.

So, at St Michael's church at Cuxton in 1779, Margaret Coosens had herself buried in a small chamber with a glass door, enclosed inside a grey marble pyramid. The door was locked but inside was a key so that Mrs Coosens, dressed in red satin, could, were she to awake, were she to have been buried whilst in some kind of trance, let herself out and return to the living. It reminds one of the Catholic tale, A Premature Burial, by Edgar Allen Poe. As it was, Mrs Coosens, once inside, never emerged from her coffin.

Ann West of the old Bayhall Manor at Pembury, was prey to similar fears and anxieties when she came to think of death. What if ...? she sometimes wondered. What if ...?

If their ever was an appropriate place for ghosts it is the derelict Bayhall Manor. Little of the magnificent old house remains now. The six-foot thick outer walls are fallen and indeed for the last hundred or so years it has been deserted, its moss-covered roofs collapsed, its massive doors no longer on their hinges, the window frames rotted. So much for the once extensive and powerful medieval fortified house and the later grand Jacobean mansion, hidden away and reached by steep and overgrown pathways through hop gardens.

Set in a secluded hollow, the decaying old house had a reputation even before the ghosthunters at the end of the 19th century decided to investigate what locals had described as groans coming from the house. Then a group of stout Tunbridge Wells gentlemen, armed with sticks, and perhaps really out for a lark rather than in the interest of scientific investigation, made their way in the dusk to the grim buildings. And they waited outside for a moment to gather their courage.

Then came a rumbling sound from inside the house. It was as if a body were being drawn across the floor. Impossible. The men laughed at the thought. At least some of them did. Others decided they had done quite enough for one night and began, with decent haste, to make their way back home. Other more intrepid souls were not to be put off so easily, but after entering the house they heard the most unnerving thuds from the cellar and the most terrible groans. Like other groups who had dared face the perils of Bayhall Manor, they too left very quickly

It is supposed to be the ghost of Ann West who so troubles the house, the same Ann West who haunts Pembury churchyard where her table tomb reads:

To the Memory of
Mrs Ann West, late of Bayhall
In this Parish, who Died April 13th, 1803
Aged 34 Years

Poor terrified soul, she had not feared death so much as premature burial, the fear being of some kind of catatonic trance which would lead the doctor into believing her dead. And then, when she came round, she would find herself in the dark, in a coffin, deep in the ground and none would hear her calls. For days she would lie there, scratching, scratching, scratching at the coffin's lid and shrieking, shrieking, shrieking into the emptiness until finally, her voice gone, her nails torn, her finger ends bloodied, she would wait in terror for the end. The thought horrified her and on her last days as she lay ill in lonely Bayhall, such terrible imaginings possessed her unendingly.

Ann West summoned her lawyer, asking him to insert a new clause in her will. She was to buried at Pembury Old Church in a coffin with the lid unscrewed and one end open. The lid was also to have a small window inserted. This was to be placed in a table tomb in the churchyard. At the east end of the tomb was to be inserted an iron-barred grille so fashioned so that it could be opened from the inside.

Arrangements were also made for her bailiff to come to the tomb each evening at sunset with food and a flask of wine, so that if Mrs West awoke suddenly from her trance she would be able to get up strength and prepare herself to meet the world once more. The bailiff was asked to continue this task for a year after the death of his mistress.

Alas for human promises. After Mrs West's death, the bailiff continued his task for no more than a month. Presumably he gave it all up as a bad job. He had no expectation of the woman's resurrection and so upped and left for Australia. Rotten sort of fellow, anyway, for they say that he had robbed her for years and that his last actions were entirely in keeping with his previous behaviour.

So Ann West roams the lonely churchyard as well as Bayhall Manor. Did she really starve to death? Did she really lie therein the coffin's dark, calling, shouting, shrieking, and at the end, whimpering? Did she starve after her bailiff deserted her? Was she unable to open the coffin lid or get to the grille?

Fifty years or so ago the experienced ghosthunter Frederick Saunders paid a night-time visit to the churchyard. He peered inside the grille but all that he could make out by the beam of his torch was the skull lying on the floor of the tomb. The lower jaw was missing. He could make out nothing else. And that night no ghost walked.

A mile south-east of Lamberhurst is the 19th century Scotney Castle, and near it the weather-stained tower of the old castle built in 1378. Nearby is the ruined Tudor manor house with its moat of water lilies. It is here that the most curious burial took place. Did Arthur Darell fake his burial? And does the bedraggled form of a drowned man, said to stagger from the moat, have anything to do with Darell? Who is this that grips the edge of the moat and hauls himself up, the water running from him? Who is it who then makes his way to the great front door, pounding it with his fists till it is opened? And when it is opened, why is there no one there on the step

Arthur Darell inherited Scotney Castle from his brother and he died ten years later in 1710. A remarkable and scarcely believable tale is told about his funeral. As the coffin was being lowered into the grave, a tall stranger in a long black cloak observed to another mourner: 'That is me they think they are burying.' After this he was not seen again. It is rather a tall tale to swallow. If a man were faking his own funeral it is unlikely that he would attend, much less pass such a strange comment. And it would be extremely difficult to effect a disguise good enough to deceive relatives and friends on such an occasion.

Yet over a hundred years later, John Bailey, the sexton, found Arthur Darell's massive iron-studded coffin in the Scotney Chapel in Lamberhurst church. When he raised the lid he saw only heavy stones. Was there something near the truth in the remark that the stranger in the cloak made at the funeral all those years earlier?

Stories are told of how, Arthur Darell, having come into the inheritance, was constantly plagued by his four disagreeable and litigious sisters. They resented his ownership of the property. In consequence he sought a rather extravagant manner of escape. After his presumed death Scotney passed not to the sisters but to a kinsman. The sister did not relent, however, and pursued a series of costly lawsuits against the new owner which led to the ultimate break up of the estate.

A further extravagant twist to the story of Arthur Darell tells how, released from the constant harrying of his sisters, he now became involved in the smuggling trade. This may be believable enough but it is difficult to accept that he continued to use the grounds and the inner underground passageways of Scotney without being detected by others in the household. Still, Darell is said to have murdered a Revenue man by throwing him in the moat at Scotney. It is he, the murdered man, who emerges from the moat and who stagger across to hammer on the front door. At least that is one was of accounting for the phantom.

Yet there is another candidate for the identity of the drowned man at Scotney. This is the ghost of a man who did not die in the moat but whose adventurous escape from the house is recorded somehow in the very atmosphere of the place. It may be that, like an extract from an old film, the escape of Father Blount is played over and over again in the grounds of Scotney Castle. And it may be said that he too had undergone a kind of burial in the depths of the house when his enemies searched for him.

Father Richard Blount was a Jesuit missionary who lived in secret at Scotney, a sound and loyal Catholic house, from 1591. These were the years when Catholicism was anathema, when it was regarded as a dangerous creed, and when its priests were seen as a fifth column operating on behalf of Spain, to bring about the downfall of Elizabeth I and her Protestant state. Yet the faith still had firm adherents, the rich among them willing to risk death at the stake to support and succour priests like Father Blount who had been smuggled into his own country, England, from Spain.

For seven years Blount worked from Scotney Castle, sometimes moving about the country to meet and sustain other Catholics and to conduct services in secret; at times to discuss matters with emissaries from other European countries. But it was a precarious existence for a priest, as it was for members of the Darell family and their servants. Blount's hiding place was reached from a passageway under the stairs of the old Tudor house. Here he had two small rooms from which he could escape via a chimney which took him down to the ground floor. There was also a sloping shaft which led to a tiny stone chamber, cramped and dark, and this too served as an alternative hiding place.

At Christmas 1598, the authorities were informed of Blount's presence in the house. It was searched rigorously twice in ten days but 'in another secret place digged in a thick stone wall' Blount went undetected even though the searchers took up permanent residence in the house. Only once did he come near to being caught.

At the time when the house was being searched, Mrs Darell saw the end of a belt protruding into the passageway from the secret door. To warn the hunted man inside she had to raise her voice but she was overheard. The searchers, confident that the fugitive was somewhere inside the thick walls, began to batter down the outside wall. They were likely to have broken through to the secret passageway by nightfall but a severe storm obliged them to abandon their work.

Blount was aware that he could no longer stay at Scotney and resolved to escape at once. One of the servants was drawn into what what must have been a last-minute piece of planning. In the evening when the searchers were having supper, the servant burst into their room calling out that their horses were being stolen. While the searchers ran out to the stables, Blount let himself out of his hiding place, ran to the moat and swam across. He disappeared into the night, never to be taken.

Is this the man dripping water? Is this Father Blount? Here, after all, was a highly charged moment. Not only was Blount and his mission in danger but many friends, including the Darells and their servants, who over the years had supported and sustained him, were now equally endangered. And there was the wider web of Catholics, all over the country, who were also involved and who, if Blount were captured and subjected to torture, might be imperilled. So perhaps the intensity of the moment has left its mark, regenerated for time to time.

Strange burials these; odd ghosts, really; and perhaps one of the living leaving his mark on time.