It is difficult to separate unquiet spirits from ghosts, or spectral beasts from either, but there does seem to be a slight distinction between the ghost whose appearances, though continual, are spasmodic, and those like John Tregeagle, doomed never to find rest, even for an hour. Tales concerning severed heads, screaming skulls and skulls that refuse to be buried or moved can be found in the folklore of many countries.
Jahn Tergagle (or John Tregeagle) has the unhappy distinction of being a ghost who has had one spell in hell long enough to teach him that any punishment on earth is better than having to return there. Like so many other of the more spectacular yarns, his story comes from the West Country.
When darkness swoops and hovers low over the moor, it is a desolate, eerie place, especially in the weatherworn hours of long winter nights. With the passing of the comfortable daylight comes a dread, an uneasy trembling of the heart that knows not what it fears. Then doors are barred and bolts rammed home, lamps are lit and fires mended; and children huddle together on the hearthrug, within close reach of their mother’s skirts and their father’s outstretched legs. The wind whistles and wails as it winds up the valley and sweeps over the moor, and the long fingers of the driving rain beat a ghastly tattoo against the tiny black square that is the window, its fragile pane being all there is to keep the wild elements at bay. But what good are bolts and bars, windows and doors, even lights and warmth and human contact, against a restless spirit that manifests itself only in sound?
Louder than the roaring wind it is, piercing through the drumming of the rain, a spine-thrilling cry of anguish shot through and through with terror, a crescendo of sound that rises to a shriek before dwindling again to a long wail of misery and despair.
The children look up as their father stirs uneasily, and their mother pokes the fire to make a brighter blaze.
‘ ’Tis only Tergagle,’ she says, intending to comfort; but what comfort can there be in having fear put into words? All children on the moor know about Tregeagle, and dread to meet his restless spirit even in broad daylight, doomed as he is never to pause for a single second in the impossible tasks that he attempts, lest he fall into even greater torment; and his agony is made all the worse by memory of that torment, for Tregeagle’s is a spirit that has already endured once the limitless pangs of hell.
In life John Tregeagle was steward to Lord Robartes, and though he came of an ancient and respected Cornish family himself, he had no love for the peasants over whom he ruled in his lord’s stead. A bitter, cruel man he was, with a heart as hard as the granite, and eyes as bleak and cold as the waters of Dozmary Pool in the midst of winter. Many a hardworking peasant lost his all at the word of John Tregeagle, and many a widow and orphan had cause to curse his grasping, avaricious spirit; but while he lived no one dared gainsay him, and his pockets were more than filled with riches filched from his own folk in the parish of St Breward and others nearby.
Time, however, had no more respect for Tregeagle than for any of his less fortunate neighbours, and in the course of it he died. Then a new steward was appointed, and the first thing he did was to go over his lord’s accounts. It seemed that one poor peasant farmer had failed to pay his rent to John Tregeagle. When the rent was demanded, the farmer declared in vain that he had paid up when asked. He had to, surely, for everyone knew that Tregeagle had no mercy. Why then, had Tregeagle not recorded the payment? Had the farmer any proof that what he said was true? None at all. What man had ever dared to ask John Tregeagle for such a thing!
Without proof, the peasant was at the mercy of the law. He must pay again, or face the harsh penalties laid upon a debtor. The one he could not do, the other he dared not contemplate. In his despair he sought advice from the only available source, the parson at St Breward, who had a curious reputation himself among his flock, for it was rumoured that he was a powerful wizard.
So the accused man went to the wizard in his parsonage on the lonely moor, and there poured out his tale of woe. The parson listened in silence and then spoke.
‘Do you have faith in the Lord?’ he asked. ‘Is it strong enough to carry you through against the Powers Unknown?’
The farmer was bewildered by the question, and at a loss how to answer. His frail hopes of assistance came crashing down around him, for it was plain to him that such a question could only be answered by absolute truth; and the truth was that his faith was not strong enough to uphold him.
‘Then there is nothing I can do,’ said the wizard, and he turned away to more profitable tasks. The farmer plodded home in disappointed and despairing sorrow, for he now had nowhere else to turn for succour. However, as the days drew on, every dawn and dusk bringing him nearer and nearer to the time appointed for his trial, his thoughts returned again and again to the one loophole the strange parson wizard had shown him, so that he began more and more to examine the doubtful strength of his faith. To his surprise, the more he relied upon that faith to save him, the stronger it seemed to grow. When only hours remained before he was to appear in court, he set off again to the lonely vicarage of St Breward, way out across the moor. There he declared to the parson that he now had faith enough for anything, and begged the wizard to believe him and put him to the test.
‘Bide still, then,’ said the wizard, taking a stick in his hands. ‘We will see what can be done.’
He reached out his arm, and with his stick drew a circle on the floor, and afterwards he stood motionless pointing with his stick to the centre of the circle. Then he raised his voice, and called out commandingly, ‘Jahn Tergagle! Jahn Tergagle! Jahn Tergagle! Come you here!’ And before the terrified eyes of the farmer, there stood his old enemy, as large as life, in the middle of the circle.
Now John Tregeagle had already endured the torments of hell long enough to repent heartily every misdeed he had ever committed, and this brief respite afforded him was made all the sweeter by the knowledge that hundreds of devils were already waiting eagerly to seize him and drag him back again to continue his everlasting punishment as soon as it was at an end.
‘Did this man pay you his rent?’ asked the parson.
‘He did,’ answered Tregeagle.
‘Will you swear to that in court tomorrow?’
‘I will.’
‘So be it.’ said the wizard. ‘Bide you there.’
While the farmer went home, wondering but rejoicing, the good parson by his holy magic bound the spirit of John Tregeagle fast within the circle on the floor.
Next day, at the assizes. Lord Robartes and his steward made their depositions against the accused man, who declared once again that he had already paid his dues, when asked, to John Tregeagle.
‘Have you proof?’ asked the judge. The farmer shook his head.
‘Nought but the word of Jahn Tergagle,’ he replied, and the laughter that rose to everybody’s lips froze there as the ghost of John Tregeagle stood suddenly amongst them, in full view of everybody; and in a voice that many of them had good cause to remember, the man returned from hell gave evidence that set the farmer free.
Then the judge, and the jury, and the officers of the court were all dumbfounded, and gazed in silence on the ghost, and on the lordly accuser and his new steward, who, as the story says, ‘was real cast’ by this turn of events. But the long silence in the court was broken by the most dreadful, unholy row coming from outside the building; and when an usher looked out, he fell back in fear and dismay. Gathering outside the courthouse were hordes and hordes of demons, horned and tailed and cloven-hoofed, uttering shrieks and cries of raucous excitement as they waited now for the Church to shatter the frail barrier that was holding John Tregeagle from their clutches, and keeping him in the land of the living, out of reach of their torment.
Now the judge and the jury, and all the other people present, were put in great perplexity. Before them stood a spirit released from hell, who had so far repented of his sins as to tell the truth at last and by so doing save an innocent man from cruel punishment. It was a member of the Church – indeed, one of its priests, who had brought the sinner back to give his evidence. Could Christian men now condemn the sinner to return for ever and a day to the limitless, unimaginable torturing of the Devil and his hellions? A long and anxious debate took place, while the officers of the court guarded doors and windows against the shrieking demons pressing ever nearer and howling in frustration as they waited for their victim. John Tregeagle stood silent, awaiting his fate, while the argument swayed first to one side, and then to the other. There were those who remembered his evil record while alive, and dreaded what his spirit could do if he were allowed to remain again amongst the living; but there were those who could not bear to contemplate his sufferings, or face with equanimity the awful possibility that they one day might have to answer for their lack of charity to a poor soul released from purgatory.
The day wore on and still the argument raged. Then at last one worthy opined that as the parson of Breward had raised the spirit, his must be the task of deciding what should happen to it now. The wizard in his wisdom put forward a compromise. Tregeagle should remain above ground, but to ensure that he never relapsed into his wicked ways, he must be kept busy at some labour from which he could never rest. If he paused for a moment in the task allotted to him, the demons could haul him back immediately to the roasting flames and redhot pincers of hell.
Then they bent their minds to finding tasks that would keep him occupied. The first of them was to bale out Dozmary Pool with nothing bigger than a limpet shell, and moreover, one with a hole in it already. To this task he was set forthwith, while the angry demons, robbed of their prey, shrieked and gabbled curses, withdrawing out of sight, though never out of hearing. All day and every day he laboured. All night and every night he dipped and emptied, while the imps of Satan gibbered in the shadows, watching and waiting to seize him if once he straightened his back for as much as a single moment.
So time went on, until one day a terrible storm blew up across the moor, and beat down upon the gloomy waters of Dozmary. So loud the wind howled and roared that Tregeagle could no longer hear the impatient demons, and took a moment’s rest. Quick and deadly as the lightning, the little hellions pounced, but realizing his danger, Tregeagle let out a dreadful cry, louder than the wind itself, and leapt. His huge leap took him at one bound right across the lake, and the demons could not follow, for it is well known that they cannot cross water. Nevertheless they pursued him, gaining on him all the time, while in terror he fled, uttering incessantly his blood-curdling shrieks of fear. Just in time, the terror-crazed spirit saw before him the little chapel on Roche Rock, and rushed towards the sanctuary it offered him. Alas, he was not quite quick enough to reach the door, but only had time to thrust his head through the east window. So there he had to stay, while the imps outside still waited, tormenting him to the best of their ability with the limited means at their disposal.
Now the unfortunate priest in charge of Roche Chapel did not know what to do. He was being driven mad himself by the noise, for the howls of pain from Tregeagle filled the inside of the church, and the yells and screams of the Devil’s imps outside made the whole district untenable. In desperation, the priest appealed to the bishop to do something about it. So the bishop brought together a synod, and with bell, book and candle they came to Roche. And there they bound the unhappy ghost with their holy spells, and spirited it away to a beach on the northern shores of Cornwall. Here Tregeagle was put to a new task just as hopeless as the first. He was to weave a truss from the fine sea sand, and from the same unlikely material spin a rope with which to bind the truss. As soon as he succeeded (with the aid of the frost, say some) in making a few grains of sand adhere to each other, the sea swept in and destroyed his handiwork. And all the time the little devils watched and waited, while in his despair the frustrated ghost roared and wailed till the noise was once more unendurable.
This time it was the humble cottagers and fisherfolk who begged the Holy Church to move Tregeagle on again; and at last the blessed St Petroc agreed to transport him to a still less frequented beach near Helston. There his new labour was to carry in a sack all the sand from the beach below Berepper, until he had deposited every grain of it, to Porthleven, across the estuary of Loe river. Sack after sack he carried and emptied, but with every tide it was swept back to the place it had been taken from. Then one day one of the hellish imps who never for a moment relaxed their watch on him darted in front of him and contrived to trip him up as he was striding across the river with the sack of sand on his shoulders. The sand poured from the sack as he stumbled, and made a dam across the river, which held back the water. In this way was formed Loe Bar, which divides Loe Pool from the sea.
Once again at the request of the inhabitants, Tregeagle was moved on, this time to Land’s End, where he was ordered to sweep the sands from Porthcurno Cove all round the rocky headland of Tol-Peden-Penwith to Nanjisal Bay on the other side.
Some people say that he remains there to this day, because his roars of anger and wails of distress at the never-ending hopelessness of his task can still be heard from time to time, along with the bloodcurdling cries of the demons, evermore watching and waiting for him to rest for one single second from his labours. But others aver that he is still being moved about from one impossible task to another. Why, if it were not so, should the lonely cottagers round Dozmary Pool still hear his cries when the wind rushes wild over Bodmin Moor?
Dick o’ Tunstead came home to claim his own again, and did not allow death to interfere with his purpose. Which of ’the French wars’ he went to is not specified, so the skull may have been declining burial from as long ago as the Hundred Years’ War; but whenever it was that it was separated from his body, it was still resisting interference with his property when the North Western Railway was being constructed across the Derbyshire moors.
When the North Western Railway Company was building its line across the Derbyshire hills, a costly bridge that was nearing completion collapsed overnight, thrown down, so the engineers believed, by a quicksand which had caused movement.
The people of Tunstead Milton knew better. ‘Nay.’ they said. ‘That were ne’er quicksand! That were Dickie’s doin’.’
‘That’s reet,’ said the oldest inhabitant. ‘Dick’ll ne’er lay low an’ let folk do as they please wi’ his land! Aye – proved it, ’e has, time an’ time again! T’railroad went too nigh t’ t’house for Dick’s liking!’
‘Aye! Ha’ not he took hand in t’farming, afore now? A reet tough customer is Dickie!’
It was hundreds of years ago, ‘in the wars against the French’ they say, that Ned Dickson of Tunstead left his farm to go to fight. When he didn’t come back, folk supposed he’d been killed; and there was one at least who was very glad that Dickson had never returned from the wars. This was his cousin and his next of kin. When it seemed certain that ‘Dickie’ was never likely to come back, the cousin married a wife, and asserted his claim to Dickson’s estate. As there was no one to say him nay, he moved in with his strong-minded lady, and set up farming in Dickson’s place.
Things were going well for the new occupier, when one day Ned Dickson turned up, hale and hearty though toughened by many years of campaigning and privation. He was anything but pleased, though in no way surprised, to find that his ownership of the farm had been usurped by his relative. After making his identity very dear, and his intention of resuming ownership and occupation clearer still, he went to bed, once more master of his inheritance.
The cousin and his wife had hidden their surprise and chagrin at his reappearance as best they might, but once Dickson had removed himself to bed, their anger, jealousy and avarice knew no bounds. They regarded the farm as their own, and Dickson as the impostor. Why had he stayed away so long? Surely, after so many years, they had as much right to the farm as he had? Where could they go to ensure that they got such rights? The longer they talked, the more they felt aggrieved; but at the same time, the longer they talked, the more certain they became that no claim of theirs would ever be listened to while Dickson was above ground.
It was the wife, strong and purposeful, who saw the only way out. Nobody else but themselves yet knew of ’Dickie’s’ return, for he had changed greatly since he went to the wars, and had come straight home to the farm. He must be murdered while still asleep, that very night, and his body buried before morning.
How the murder was done has never been told; but perhaps after death the body was dismembered for easier disposal, and buried in and about the farmyard where an old bone or two in years to come would barely cause a comment, should it be found. Then the couple relaxed into their normal way of life again. But not for long.
Coming into the house one evening, they were horrified to see the skull of Dickson grinning at them from a window seat at the top of the main staircase. Hastily they reburied it, deeper and safer than before, but it was to no avail. Dickson’s skull refused to remain under the earth. He had come home to take charge of his farm, and that he intended to do. As often as the skull was buried, so often it reappeared, at various places within the house. The cousin and his wife, hag-ridden with fear and plagued with guilt, could not keep their minds on their business, and after enduring the terror as long as they could, decided to move out. Dickie had regained his own.
New people bought the farm, undeterred by tales of the skull that went with it. They soon found it grinning its sardonic grin at them from various spots (though it seemed to like the window seat best). They decided to give it decent burial, though warned by local people that it would be of no use, and that if they tried it, they would only have themselves to blame when things went wrong.
The crops failed, the pigs ate their young, the cows dried up and the sheep dropped their lambs too soon. Worried by this strange course of ill-luck, they remembered the prophecy, and dug Dickie’s skull up again. This time, to make sure he kept a benevolent if grisly eye on his old home, they nailed the skull to a rafter; but in 1905 it had once again been returned to the window seat, and was still there only a few years ago.
Dick o’ Tunstead still hates to be disturbed, and all kinds of disasters follow, it is said, if or when he is disturbed, as the N.W.R. found to their considerable cost in the nineteenth-century heyday of steam.
There is something particularly spine-chilling about an insubstantial apparition of a creature as seemingly innocuous as a white rabbit or a black dog. Such tales, however, play a fairly large part in the folklore concerning the supernatural. Old Shuck, for instance, is a big black dog, known all over East Anglia, who may make his appearance either as a death-warning or ill omen of some other kind, or, conversely, as a beneficent guide to lost travellers and the protector of threatened innocence. Ghostly white cats and king-sized black snakes also belong to this company.
In the days before electricity lit up even the remotest areas of the rural countryside, there were few villages that could not boast of a ghost or two, and few folk who did not have at least a passing acquaintance with something supernatural; and if they did not actually see or hear familiar human revenants, then they were sure to have encountered Old Shuck, or the White Cat, or some other haunt in animal form. Such was the White Cat that crossed the road from dykeside to dykeside in the fenland village of Ramsey Heights, seen by at least four generations (including this author).
And such was the White Rabbit of Egloshayle in Cornwall. A large, white, pink-eyed rabbit, this supernatural creature was (or is?), with beautiful long ears and silky fur, for all the world as if just escaped from the loving caresses of a child owner. Whenever the full moon lights up the open space outside the churchyard wall, just where the lane from the village meets the high road, the rabbit is likely to be at play there. Out from the churchyard wall it lollops, and gambols in the moonlight among the long grass. If anyone happens to pass, there is no scuttering away with a flash of white into the shadows; on the contrary, the pretty little creature lopes near, sits up on its haunches, lifts its elegant ears, and gazes steadfastly from its pink eyes at the intruder. Not that anyone ever stays long enough actually to examine it – especially not local people. They know too well that happens to folk who try to test the reality of their sight.
There was the postman, for instance, who had to cross that way one winter evening when he was late home, having had to deliver on foot some letters to a very outlying farm on the hills. It was already dark when he reached the church, but the moon was nearly at the full, and helped him on his way. He knew all about the White Rabbit, being a local man; but in all his days he had never caught a glimpse of it, and was himself inclined to believe that others might not either, if they didn’t stop quite so late in the village pub. Howsoever, he had made up his mind that if he ever did clap eyes on it, he would prove once and for all that it was only flesh and blood, an ordinary rabbit escaped from captivity and gone wild, which accounted for its not being afraid of human beings.
On the night in question, before reaching the spot, he provided himself with a heavy cudgel of wood, solid and knobbly enough to deal with a madman, let alone a rabbit. The moon was well up, though hidden, and the postman walked resolutely forward into the shadows by the churchyard wall. Then the moon sailed out from behind a cloud, and flooded the open space with silver-blue light; and out from the bottom of the wall came the White Rabbit, into the full brilliance of the moonlight, so that every hair and whisker seemed to gleam. The postman stopped, and found his heart beating uncomfortably fast. The rabbit stopped, too, sitting up on its haunches with its ears lifted, looking straight back at him from its intense, queer pink eyes. The postman raised his cudgel, but the little animal never moved a muscle. In spite of his resolution, in spite of himself, he let the cudgel fall to his side, and without waiting for anything else, took to his heels. He was no more than halfway across the clearing when he looked back over his shoulder, and found the rabbit lolloping after him, close on his heels. The road before lay open to the moonlight, and he knew that according to all the tales he had ever heard, the rabbit would not disappear while under the light of the moon. As he lengthened his stride, so the rabbit lengthened its bound, and showed no signs of giving up the chase. With mounting horror, he called up all his resolution, and turned to face it. The rabbit halted immediately, sat up on its haunches, and gazed. The frantic postman again raised his cudgel, and this time brought it smashing down on the rabbit’s furry head, on the place just at the back of its neck, that vulnerable spot by which countless thousands of its brown wild cousins have met their end. The man said afterwards that he actually felt the thud as the cudgel met the soft body – but the rabbit merely hopped round to face him again, though the cudgel lay shivered into a dozen pieces, as though splintered on a rock.
After that, it was a brave man who went that way when there was likely to be a moon. But the tale went round again and again, and was oft recounted in the tap of the village inn.
One night, a party of young men were drinking in the bar, among them a newcomer to the district. As the ale flowed and the talk grew wild, somebody related the strange old tale about the White Rabbit. All the local boys seemed heartily to believe it, but the stranger would have none of it. Scoffing and jeering, he pooh-poohed the entire story as bucolic fabrication. His friends insisted they were telling the truth, and the stranger grew angry. What did they take him for, he asked belligerently. Did they really consider him such a numbskull that he would believe any moonshine tales they thought to test him with? Even if a white rabbit should appear in the stated spot, what possible harm could a rabbit do anybody? For his part, he just wished it would appear to him, and if it did, it would give him the greatest of all pleasures to put a bullet through it.
At this point, one of the locals opened the shutters, and looked out. The sky was clear and starry, and a full moon was riding serenely high, casting her radiance everywhere over the peaceful scene. The young man turned to his sceptical friend.
‘If you want to prove it, you’d best go now,’ he said. That rabbit loves the moonlight, and you’ll never get a better chance to meet it than tonight.’
‘If I had a gun, I’d prove it is no haunt,’ said the stranger.
The landlord, who had been listening to the exchange, came round from behind the bar and lifted a gun down from the wall. It was loaded and passed to the stranger, among pointed remarks and half-sneering challenges to now show what he was made of, or hand back the gun and eat his words.
Obviously he was no coward. He put on his hat, took up the gun, and prepared to go. The rest of the party watched him stride off into the moonlight with his hands in his pockets and the gun lying in the crook of his elbow. His feet rang on the stones of the road, and his merry whistling grew fainter as he strode away. When he reached the bridge they lost sight of him, and went back to their beer mugs. But no one seemed inclined to settle down again, and an uncanny sense of unease pervaded the party. No one spoke, and it was as if all were listening, involuntarily, for a sound. After a minute or two, one of them opened the door again, and looked out. The others crowded behind him.
‘Can you see him?’ ‘Can you hear anything?’ they asked, though all knew perfectly well that he had not yet had time to walk to the church. Perhaps the cool evening air sobered them up a bit, but however it was they began to look sheepishly at each other until at last one of them voiced what all of them were feeling, that it was a nasty trick they had played on an unsuspecting stranger, and that they didn’t much like the idea of him facing the White Rabbit alone.
No sooner voiced, than acted upon. They snatched up their caps, and set off in a body out on to the road, and down towards the church. As they came near to the place, they heard the report of a gun and a loud cry. They broke as one man into a run, and came to the moonlit open space where they paused with dry mouths and hearts beating fast enough to suffocate them, or so it seemed.
Neither man nor rabbit could be seen. They spread out in all directions, and searched the open space, though in truth the moon was so bright that they could have seen a mouse move. They ran up and down the roads, calling their friend by name, and begging him not to tease them any longer. There was no reply.
At length one of them, bolder than the rest, vaulted the churchyard wall, and came down on the inner side. Next moment his friends heard his frantic shouts for them to follow him; and there they found their stranger acquaintance, quite dead, with one barrel of his gun discharged and the lead buried in his own heart.
A man who knows this story would have had to be more than usually courageous to visit the spot in the light of the full moon thereafter. Not only did the White Rabbit hop about there as unperturbed as ever, but leaning on the churchyard wall from the inner side the ghostly figure of a man could now be seen. He had a double-barrelled shot gun in his hands, taking steady aim at something that seemed to move always where the moon made the greatest glory among the long grass of the open space in front of him.
