10
It was just past four o’clock in the morning, and Stephen, Caroline, and I had joined Lesley outside, keeping her company while she partook in a cigarette of her own. St Osyth is a relatively small village with little in the way of light pollution, so as I craned my head to look up, I was treated to a brilliantly clear night sky stretching out on all sides above us. Our breath was coming in misty plumes, the cold air burning our lungs, but I had to admit that Vanessa had been right—the cold outside the Cage felt somehow different to that inside … healthier or less threatening, perhaps, if that makes any sense.
“This is about where the coffin came through the wall, when Vanessa’s friend saw it,” Stephen said, pointing to a spot close to the exterior window. His hand kept tracking around in a big half-circle. “Then it must have passed through here into Coffin Alley.”
We stepped out into the alley, which was pitch black and deserted at that time of the morning, apart from a single tabby cat that eyed us warily from on top of one of the garden walls.
I’d done some research on the locality and discovered that the cemetery at Clay Lane had opened for business in 1855. The first body to be interred there was that of a sailor whose identity remains unknown to this day; his drowned corpse had washed up on the beach at St Osyth that very same year, and this unknown mariner was but the first in a chain of burials there that have continued to this very day. Coffin Alley was seen as a convenient route for carting the deceased from the village undertakers’ premises to their final resting place.
Just to stretch our legs after a long night spent cooped up inside the Cage, we decided to walk the length of the alley and back. As we strolled along beneath the starry night sky, the four of us discussed the nature of Jacqui’s ghost sighting, finally coming to the conclusion that it was most likely either a time slip or a residual haunting. We would probably never be able to tell for sure which of the two it was, but my money goes on the latter.
A time slip, just as the name implies, is a paranormal incident in which present-day witnesses seem to go backward in time to a bygone age (to my knowledge, there are no documented cases of observers traveling forward in time, into the future) and encounter a previous part of history. Perhaps the famous example occurred in France during the year 1901, and is now referred to as the “Moberly-Jourdain incident,” after the names of the two ladies who were the principal witnesses.
Using pen names to conceal their identities, the ladies—Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain—published a book that detailed an extraordinary occurrence. If their account was to be believed, then the two authors had visited the magnificent Palace of Versailles in 1901, and had somehow been thrown back in time to the late 1700s, into the royal court of King Louis VI. As they wandered around, Moberly and Jourdain encountered people from that same time period, including one whose description was eerily close to that of Marie Antoinette herself.
After initially searching for a conventional explanation (had they unwittingly stumbled upon a fancy dress party or historical reenactment that had been taking place on that day?) Charlotte and Eleanor finally concluded that they had either traveled back in time or encountered the ghosts of a France now long gone. Publishing a narrative of their escapades some ten years later titled An Adventure, the ladies received more than their fair share of ridicule. The story—and indeed, the supposedly paranormal nature of it—was a subject of great controversy at the time of its publication in 1911, and remains so today, with some believing that the two ladies did indeed open a window backward in time, whereas others maintain that the whole account is either a fabrication or nothing more than a gross misunderstanding or delusion.
The paranormal literature is replete with examples of possible time slips, but I don’t think that Jacqui’s burial party quite fits into this category, mainly because the two men that were hauling the coffin did not interact with either Jacqui herself, or with the twenty-first century environment. If one studies accounts of supposed time slips, the witnesses generally speak with the people they encounter during the episode, and the buildings, objects, and landscape around them seem to obey the normal laws of physical reality, including being completely solid to the touch. The two undertakers’ assistants (as it seems most likely they were) walked through walls, even though they appeared entirely solid themselves, and were therefore more likely to be either apparitions or hallucinations.
A residual haunting fits the bill much better. It may help to think of such apparitions as a form of psychic recording mechanism—one which we do not yet fully understand, and certainly cannot explain (although there are several theories). In the same way that we can use our phones to record video footage and play it back when we choose to, a residual haunt replays the events of the past, over and over again on a continuous loop.
Most commonly, residual hauntings seem to be found in locations where there was great emotion. Sometimes this can be very negative emotion, such as the violent death and carnage found upon battlefields, and at others it is the polar opposite, which is why some residences and places of work are haunted by those who loved them a great deal during their lifetime. I have investigated two haunted firehouses in my career, and in each case, the men who lived, slept, worked, and played in them loved the building and the second family that they lived with inside those four walls. Is it any wonder, then, that some of that strong positive emotion should have left behind a psychic residue of some kind, one that can be perceived by the right observer under the proper circumstances?
I find it very telling indeed that neither of the two men that Jacqui claims to have seen either spoke to her, made eye contact, or interacted with her in any way. Walking through walls is, of course, another strong indicator that Jacqui may well have witnessed a paranormal recording. After all, the kitchen and exterior wall were only added on to the Cage during the twentieth century; before, that particular stretch of ground would most likely have been a part of Coffin Alley.
As we turned and walked back toward the Cage, we began to discuss the other residual phenomena that plagued the Cage. Many of the sounds that Vanessa described, such as the childlike footsteps running around upstairs and some of the sounds that had been reported, could easily have been residual in nature, and so could the apparition of the emaciated woman who has been seen peering out of the master bedroom window (she has frightened more than a few passing motorists who thought she was a Halloween mannequin!)
“There’s residual activity here for sure,” Stephen agreed as he turned the key in the lock and let us back into the Cage. “But the most disturbing stuff is all intelligent.”
“The shadow figure that Vanessa encountered when she was in the kitchen,” Caroline put in.
“And the man standing behind her in the bathroom,” Lesley added.
“Right,” agreed the priest. He thought about shrugging off his jacket, but the air inside the Cage (even with the electric heaters working at maximum output) was so cold that he decided to leave it on. As he passed the door to the staircase, he rapped on it with his knuckles. “It also sounds like Jacqui’s friend at the top of the staircase is pretty intelligent.”
“Intelligent, and nasty,” I pointed out. “Could that have been Redfast, do you think?”
“I don’t think so,” said Lesley, shaking her head. “Redfast seemed quite nice, though it’s hard to tell for certain when you’re communicating through a Ouija board. It’s a bit like texting.”
We all laughed.
“I think that the dark entity here is the one that Vanessa warned us about,” Stephen said quietly. “The jailer.”
“He sounds like a right nasty piece of work,” Caroline shuddered.
“Doesn’t he just?” I looked around, wondering if that particular dark entity was silently watching us and listening to every word. “Maybe we should just bite the bullet and ask him … ”
The human pendulum is a relatively controversial technique in paranormal research circles. Basically, it purports to allow disembodied spirits to interact with their living counterparts by manipulating their physical bodies. I had first learned of the technique during my investigation of an abandoned old hospital in Tooele, Utah, and had been sufficiently intrigued to add it to my repository of investigative techniques. I felt that the jury was still out on its validity, and so I made a point of using it whenever I wanted to attempt communication with a spirit entity.
The technique itself is a relatively simple one, requiring just two volunteers: One acts as the human pendulum itself, whereas the other serves as a questioner, asking a series of questions to which the answer must either be a yes or a no. When acting as the pendulum, it is only necessary for the volunteer to stand in a relaxed fashion and to passively allow the process to take place.
If the volunteer is susceptible to the technique (which in my experience, somewhere between 30 and 40 percent do seem to be), then they will respond physically when the questioner asks any spirits who might be present in the room to respond with answers. The first time this happens, particularly when the volunteer is an avowed skeptic, the look upon their face when their body begins to involuntarily move can often be priceless.
It must be noted, however, that some of the people who are susceptible are responding subconsciously, due to the ideomotor reflex: a well-documented physiologic phenomenon in which specific thoughts manage to provoke a physical response from the human body. It is important to note that this is not fraud on the part of the subject; they truly have no conscious knowledge of what their body is doing. Scientific researchers have also laid the outcomes of such activities as the Ouija board and automatic writing (sometimes known as “spirit writing”) at the door of ideomotor activity, pointing out that the only “entity” being communicated with is the subject’s own subconscious. When it came to our experiment, I wanted to include some additional control measures that ought to make it a more valid test.
Once again, all four of us had congregated inside the Cage itself in order to attempt our first session. Lesley gamely stepped up to be a test subject, even though she didn’t know exactly what it might entail.
“You have one job, Lesley—to relax,” I reassured her, and then went on to explain the few very simple rules. Once everybody was on the same page, the session began. Stephen and Caroline helped to observe and also used cameras to record the session for future reference.
Acting as the questioner, I addressed the spirits who (we all hoped) would soon be using Lesley as a means of communication. “Please show Lesley her no position.”
Lesley tilted backward at the waist, her head and shoulders going back at least twenty degrees in one single, smooth motion. When the spirits were asked to move Lesley to her yes position, she shot forward. Stephen and I exchanged a look of surprise. It was rare for the human pendulum to kick off so rapidly and forcefully. Was that a measure of just how strong the energies inside the Cage had become?
And yet, when attempts were made to get the spirits to answer even the most basic of questions, Lesley’s body stubbornly refused to move. Finally I asked in exasperation, “Do you want somebody other than Lesley to be the human pendulum?” In response, Lesley rocked backward on her heels, firmly into the no position.
“Well, that’s pretty clear. Let’s look at the flip side of the coin. Do you want somebody other than me to ask the questions?”
The answer was an unequivocal yes.
“Alright,” I sighed. “Can’t argue with that. That’s me out. Take it away, Stephen and Caroline.”
Caroline jumped in first with, “Did you used to live in this house?” No.
“Were you a prisoner in the Cage, kept here against your will?” No, again. There was no response when Caroline enquired whether the spirit was simply a visitor, but when Stephen asked whether they had died in the Cage, we received our third straight no in a row.
Ignoring the entity’s apparent dislike of me, I asked whether the spirit had been the jailer here in the Cage.
Yes. The human pendulum claimed that it had indeed been the jailer.
“Oh,” I replied, mustering a sense of levity that I really did not feel. “We’ve heard all about you … ”
Caroline enquired as to whether the jailer had liked his job, and she was told that he did. This fit with what Vanessa had told us about the prison’s vicious overseer—that he had been a cruel and malicious man, one who had possessed an unhealthy relish for his work. After all, it took a very specific type of personality to delight in the torture and incarceration of men and women who had been falsely accused.
“He’s a right nasty piece of work, that jailer,” Vanessa had warned me when I had first arrived. “Watch out for him, Rich.”
Stephen asked whether plague victims had ever lived in the Cage. The pendulum again confirmed that they had. “Was this before your time?” No. “After, then?” Yes.
A subsequent check of the records revealed that a woman named Rose Hallybread or Hollybread had died of the plague while locked up in the St Osyth Jail, sometime around the year 1645. She had been imprisoned on charges of witchcraft.
“Are there other spirits here, apart from you?” I asked. Yes. “Are you keeping them here?” No. Which seemed like rather an odd thing for the spirit of a jailer to say, and one that certainly did not fit with the man’s reputation. The investigators began to wonder whether this spirit really was the same dark man that had stalked and tormented Vanessa during her tenure living in the Cage … or whether we were being lied to.
“Are they innocent, these spirits?” I continued. There was no answer. Lesley just stood there, unmoving. Finally realizing that I had phrased the question in a way that was much too open-ended, I tried again: “Are they innocent of the crime of which they were accused … the crime of witchcraft?”
No.
“Are you a friendly spirit?”
Based on how quickly and forcefully Lesley was shoved, the answer was a clear and unequivocal no, which caused us all to look at one another with raised eyebrows. If he was being honest, then this entity was unfriendly to them and could quite possibly mean us harm. On the other hand, it was possible that some discarnate trickster was simply playing a prank on us, trying to string us along and perhaps instill a little fear. That was something that Stephen and I had seen during other investigations, something actually quite common. It was simply impossible for us to tell whether that was the case this time.
When asked if he was angry, the spirit chose not to answer—yet when asked if he was happy to be here, he claimed that he was not. That struck all four of us as being somewhat odd. If this really was the jailer, the spirit of a man who had liked his job to such an unhealthy extent, then why was he now unhappy to still be in residence here at the Cage? Was it because he was much less able to physically torment the people who visited here with the same impunity that he had once enjoyed?
The answer wasn’t long in coming. “Are you trapped here? Stuck here?” I ventured. Yes, replied the pendulum. So this spirit wanted to move on, but claimed that it was caught somehow and couldn’t escape. Whether “here” meant within the Cage specifically, or just on the Earth plane in general, was yet to be determined.
“Can we help you to move on?” went unanswered, but Lesley tilted straight to the yes position when my question was rephrased as, “Would you like to move on?” As the representative of the clergy present at the scene, Stephen had already agreed that he would try to assist any spirits who were Earthbound in moving on to the next plane—assuming that they wanted to, of course.
The session tailed off, with more and more questions going unanswered. Perhaps Lesley was getting tired and run down, I mused, or maybe the energy of the spirit that claimed to have been speaking through her was starting to dissipate. Either way, we all recognized the fact that we had run up against a brick wall, and we quickly agreed that a break was in order. Everybody could recharge their batteries with a cup of tea and a few biscuits before picking it up again with a new pendulum.