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The reason for concluding these accounts of supernatural and paranormal occurrences with a series of reports from a narrow area of Tunbridge Wells, just a few haunted acres, is not that the stories are especially thrilling. Indeed most of them are merely fragments, sketchy accounts, collected together by Geoff Butler who lives on The Pantiles, that elegant, shaded walk, that centuries-old centre of high fashion and the beau-monde.
It is not even that the stories are easily varifiable. They must be taken at their face value. But what does give them credence is the fact that they are all so matter of fact and that they are not rounded tales with a beginning, middle or end. They do not have about them the smack of invention; they have no breath of fiction about them. They are simply people's accounts of events of the briefest duration which to them are inexplicable. They are in fact so very similar to the countless reports of unaccountable incidents that are recorded in every year.
So to The Pantiles where articles go missing; temperatures change; objects are moved; dogs refuse to enter rooms; unusual smells linger on the air and there are unseen presences in the rooms. And there are apparitions, too, some very obviously from times past and others so evidently from today.
Start with Grey Ladies. Over many years there have been reports of a matronly figure dressed in grey sitting at the first floor window of Binns Restaurant overlooking The Pantiles. She does not do much. She just sits. Another Grey Lady was spotted in the Swan Hotel on 2nd October 1997. Are we to assume that all ladies in the past wore grey? Or do many apparitions appear in a kind of monochrome?
As a relief from ladies in grey, there is the lady in black at York Cottage. Several witnesses, including the present occupants, have reported her presence. She stands by the front gate and the general view is that she is happy. But she too appears to do nothing. It does not seem as if there is an intelligence or feeling here in the way that seems to be with, say, the Grey Lady of Cleve Court, or any of those manifestations requiring release or exorcism. It is as if a snatch of film is undergoing a constant repeat but there is no clear narrative. The Grey and Black Ladies of Tunbridge Wells seem like left-overs.
The figure seen by Daniella Bayfied, the owner of Master Transcriptions, is much the same. She is a young girl dressed in Georgian clothing who sits on the old milestone outside her building. Geoff Butler writes: 'She seems so much part of the scene that we wonder if the girl is waiting perhaps for her boyfriend - or is she waiting for the coach to London?' Like many other of the apparitions mentioned in this section - for example, those seen on Blue Bell Hill - she looks perfectly ordinary and solid. She is certainly not one of those who seem to be for ever on the wander, as though searching for something. She can best be regarded as another accident left-over, an echo of the past, perhaps, or a reflection, but not the sort of ghost who is in need of release. She is possibly best described as another example of 'psychical residue'.
A lady, who wishes to remain anonymous, lives in a flat in The Pantiles. One day during the summer of 1997 she began to feel uneasy in the house although she was unable to account for this. In the early hours of 5th August, she woke and at once sensed that she was not alone. She got out of bed and then saw what she took at first to be her own reflection in the window. With a start she realised that it could not be for what she saw was a back view of a figure, dressed in modern clothing. The witness thinks that this shadowy visitor might then have been joined by another figure, although she is uncertain of this. Whatever it was then disappeared, leaving her extremely distressed.
What is particularly intriguing is that in some way this manifestation may be linked to other curious happenings in The Pantiles in the same week when there was a Georgian Festival in the town. How appropriate that the great watering place should celebrate its garish past, the times of the future George IV and all his louche companions, who on the Brighton, Bath, Cheltenham spa circuit, always had time for Tunbridge Wells with its Assembly Rooms, its Beau Nash, its card games, races, balls and, of course, its waters.
Modern festivals, those great outdoor theatres, naturally need changing rooms and administrative centres throughout the towns in which they are organised. So it was in Tunbridge Wells where an empty shop in The Pantiles - number eleven - happened to be available. It was here that Emma Heddon and Stephanie Wallis acted as wardrobe mistresses, charged during the Festival with caring for the performers' costumes. On the first night of the performance, 30th July 1997, they found one item of costume, a reproduction Georgian riding skirt, on the floor. Well, that sort of thing happens. But the following night the skirt was on the floor again and this time an antique gun, another property item, lay on top of it. The girls made enquiries but no one claimed responsibility for moving either the skirt or the gun. There is no previous evidence of number eleven being haunted. A poltergeist? Perhaps.
What is of interest is the dates of these supernatural activities. Odd, isn't it, that in the same week there should be manifestations of two quite distinct kinds of Pantiles buildings relatively close to each other? Were there any particular conditions which might cause an outbreak of such activities? Many of the investigators into these matters are of the view that distinct meteorological features - high pressure, storm conditions - set some ghostly activities in train. Local weather conditions during high summer when it was extremely warm were possibly unusual enough to spark off poltergeists or other ghostly activities.
And is the following incident relevant? At about six thirty one morning in May of the previous year, the local roadsweeper, Kenneth Morgan, was passing the building next to number eleven, the one that was used as a changing room. During that period the building - numbers nine to fifteen The Pantiles - was undergoing renovations but there were no workmen about at that early hour. And that is why Mr Morgan's attention was drawn to the noise of heavy timbers being thrown about. He looked through the window and saw the lumps of wood in motion as though they were being hurled about.
When the builders arrived later they found no sign of disturbance. Was some kind of apparition presenting itself to Kenneth Morgan? Or was it a poltergeist in action? It certainly sounds like poltergeist activity although they are not usually so prepared to tidy up after their activities. And if it was a poltergeist, was it responsible for the disturbances experienced by the girls next door the following year?
Then there is the other nearby house - number seven The Pantiles - to take into account. Spencer Ayres and Julia Millbank, who moved in 1996 have reported that items in the house have been unaccountably moved. They also tell of the experience of James Simpson, their visitor, who, lying in bed one night, sensed a presence in the corner of the bedroom. He felt himself to be physically powerless, unable to move. It was as though he was tied to his bed. This is similar to the experience of Eric Essex, who in 1966 had been unable to speak or move until the mysterious presence moved off his bed in the house in Waterdales, in Northfleet.
Julia Millbank has also experienced temperature changes, a common enough feature in matters supernatural. This is why the investigators at Dover Castle included thermometers in their equipment when they tried to track the manifestations there. There really does seem to be a powerfully active entity of some kind operating in these neighbouring houses.
Elsewhere in The Pantiles, there are accounts of a dog in number 23B refusing to go into a room, a reminder of the behaviour of Lady Carson's spaniel, Susan, at Cleve Court. Some years ago one occupant of this flat, Mrs Jo Morgan, reported that there had always been strange occurrences there. On three separate occasions, she said, the bedclothes were pulled from her daughter Samantha's bed. Despite putting up a struggle the bedding was each time wrenched from the girl's grasp with considerable force.
In Geoff Butler's house, number forty eight, there was an odd experience in 1978. A carpenter and an electrician were working together on building work in the cellar. On one occasion, after telling the carpenter, the electrician turned off the power supply. The carpenter, getting on with his work in the dark, went on chatting to his workmate. Only when the light was restored did he realise that he was on his own. The electrician had been on another floor. Yet the carpenter had been aware of a presence in the darkness of the cellar. Whose?
Did it have any link with the two hauntings 1980 at numbers forty four to forty six, now a restaurant and bar called Springs but then, serving the same function, called The Chalet Arosa? An employee, David Lawrence, had just locked up when he thought he heard footsteps in the bar. When he reopened it, he saw a casually dressed man wearing a leather apron. As soon as he challenged the stranger, the figure vanished.
Some weeks later, the manager, Pat Humphreys, in bed in one of the upstairs flats, found that could not sleep. There had been a dramatic fall in temperature and he felt extremely cold. Then, on the wall of his bedroom, he saw a light which grew, transformed its shape and then materialised into a man wearing a carpenter's apron. The figure moved across the room and passed through the wall.
Was it this workman the carpenter thought he was talking to in the cellar of number forty eight? Was the figure seen by David Lawrence the same one as was seen by Pat Humphreys? Are we considering three different presences here? Or two? Or one?
The subsequent owners of the restaurant/bar never saw any apparition but they did claim that they were very often conscious of some indefinable presence in the kitchen and that on the stairs, they felt at times that someone was trying to pass them.
And what is it that the owner of the post office at number forty smells as he opens up the premises each morning? He claims that it is pipe tobacco, just as the Friends of Chatham Theatre Royal think they smell tobacco in the auditorium of a building in which for many years there has been no smoking. Do smells have their own echoes? Is the smell in the post office anything to do with the fact that the building was at one time part of the Assembly Rooms or that there were coffee rooms nearby? Do some of the smells of the past's high living days linger on?
Then of course there are stories of the Common opposite The Pantiles. There is the black horse and its rider with his mauve cloak. There is the enormously fat female who is thought to be Mary Jennings, a notorious drunkard, 'built like a barrel', and who died in 1736. There is the young woman falling to her death from Wellington Rocks in 1917, heard by a witness to call out her lover's name. They say that even today, though she is never seen, her voice can be heard calling out 'Daniel'.
So many phantoms who leave us with many answered questions. But the major question is: Why are there so many ghosts in such a small area of an English country town? What is the secret of these few haunted acres?