Do you believe in ghosts?
Have you ever seen a ghost or has something inexplicable happened to you which you can’t explain?
Even if you haven’t had an experience yourself it seems that many people do believe in the paranormal with around 59% of men and 61% of women saying they’ve at least one paranormal experience.
But what are ghosts and do they even exist at all? Are they the spirits of dead people or are they like fragments of broken code or old photographs or are they something else entirely?
There are two main types of ghosts, apparitions and poltergeists (noisy ghosts). The first usually look like people –either solid or partially transparent while the latter are invisible but like to make a lot of noise and throw things around. These two phenomena can occur together or separately. In many cases poltergeists seem to attach to attach to an individual and sometimes even follow them from house to house but in other cases they seem to be attached to a building. There is no doubt in my mind that they exist but what they are no-one knows.
Despite all of this ‘belief’ in the existence of the paranormal there is no such thing as an expert in the field because the subject just doesn’t lend itself to scientific study. The only people who are the real experts on what happens when you did are people who are already dead and anyone who tells you they know what happens after we die isn’t telling the truth.
People have been trying to communicate with the dead ever since we came down from the trees and started sitting around camp fires.
Ever since written records began there’s been this idea that when the human body ceases to exist, some part of our consciousness continues to survive in some intangible form or other and if we’re clever enough or if the other side wants to talk to us badly enough, some way will be found to bridge this huge dimension.
There are many theories about what ghosts might be or even if they exist at all but the idea of ghosts if universal and found in every culture.
I’m going to start this talk by describing some events which occurred in 1848 when some young women called the Fox Sisters(Maggie and Kate) who lived in Rochester, New York started to convince people that they could communicate with the dead. The Fox’s were a lower middle class family living in an old house that was reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a peddler who had been murdered and his remains were buried under the house.
The two young women seemed to become the focus of loud knocking noises and no one in the room could tell where they were coming from or what was making them but after developing a simple (and since universal code) of one rap for yes and two for no it turned out they were communicating with the ghost of this dead peddler and the young women started to became famous.
People would come to the house from all over the area and ask ‘the ghost’ questions and the knocking noises would appear out of nowhere and would seem to answer their questions in an intelligent way.
In 1849 the sisters demonstrated the rapping at Corinthian Hall in Rochester. This was the first demonstration of spiritualism ever held before a paying public and this began a long series of public events featuring spiritualist mediums in America.
The idea of some people being able to talk to ghosts via rapping noises spread all over the world and the people who were the ‘telephone operators’ between this world and the next came to be referred to as ‘mediums’.
At first many of these so-called ‘mediums’ produced noises like the Fox sisters but gradually – as perhaps the spirit realm became more adept and communicating and/or so did mediums – other kind of phenomena evolved including voice phenomena (where the medium purported to talk in the voice of a deceased person), automatic writing (where the mediums hand would be guided by a deceased operators) and finally physical manifestations in the form of full body apparitions and other objects (called ‘apports’) suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
By the 1880’s the idea of communicating with the dead had become well established and people would get together at each others houses and hold what became known as ‘seances’ (from the French words ‘session’ or ‘to sit’.)The usual procedure was for a group of people to sit round a table in the dark with a medium and then noises would happen all around the room, objects would seem to float about, people would be touched and sometimes apparitions would appear. This ‘physical mediumship’ became more and more popular and raping noises and whispers were no longer enough to convince most people but the full body apparition of your recently deceased relative standing in front of you was another matter entirely! Remember this was all taking place in almost complete darkness so it was extremely easy to fake all of these phenomena and many mediums were paid for their services and sometimes very well.
Gradually so-called ‘spirit cabinets’ became popular pieces of furniture at séances and the medium would be placed inside the cabinet and sometimes even tied up to prevent them from moving objects in the room. But of course these cabinets, combined with a dark room, made it even easier to fool people with fake effects.
But if your loved one had recently died there was often no greater comfort than to hear their ‘voice’ or perhaps even see a blurry image of their face.
Of course many people were extremely skeptical of these phenomena and mediums became increasingly ‘controlled’ so they couldn’t cheat and move around in the darkness and produce the effects and noises themselves.
Often they would be rigorously searched beforehand to make sure they had nothing hidden on their person and occasionally some mediums were even made to wear a one piece suit which enclosed the whole body but often phenomena would still take pace despite these precautions. Naturally it was still possible to use all sorts of trickery, particularly if one or more accomplices were involved (sometimes small children) to move the objects around the room for you or create the other ghostly effects.
As the controls on mediums became more and more rigorous it became harder and harder to secret props around their body or to move around in the darkness unseen and some female mediums even performed completely naked to try and prove they were genuine. Some – if not all of these – went to the extreme lengths to hide objects inside body cavities or even regurgitate them and a number of physical manifestations were found to be produced by manipulating cheesecloth (a very thin fabric) which had hidden internally.
The phenomena became so common that eventually it demanded investigation from the scientific community to try and explain the effects produced by those mediums who had not been caught faking and were regarded to be the real deal and people like doctors and scientists started to attend séances to try and work out if any of the phenomena were actually genuine.
Not surprisingly, one of the very first groups to be formed to study paranormal phenomenon was called ‘The Ghost Club’ which was launched in London in 1862.
One of the club’s earliest subjects for investigation were the Davenport Brothers – a pair of cabinet mediums who seemed to produce remarkable effects in the dark – even when they were both seemingly retrained by people holding their hands. Some people were convinced they were legitimate but other people just saw their manifestations as cheap magic tricks. Clearly some scientific effort needed to be brought to bear on the subject as well as some actual magicians, who were often more skeptical than the scientists themselves!
In 1882 a more ‘professional group, the Society for Psychical Research, was formed with the stated purpose of trying to understand psychic or paranormal events using modern scientific means. It described itself as the first society to conduct organized scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models and to really try and study paranormal events in a scientific manner.
Henry Sedgwick, an economist and a philosopher, was the first president and some very famous people were also involved including the renowned chemist Sir William Crookes, the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, the poet Frederick Henry Myers and the psychologist William James.
Areas of study included hypnotism, dissociation, thought transference of mediumship, apparitions, haunted houses and really anything at all to do with the unexplainable.
Frederick Myers(above),was an interesting character, an independently wealthy and erudite romantic intellectual who’d been involved in homosexual relationships with both Arthur Sedgwick (Henry’s brother), the poet John Addington Simons and possibly Lord Battersea!
Using his money he began to commission séances with one of most well known mediums of the day, Eusapia Palladino and in 1895 she was invited to come and stay at his house for a series of investigations into her purported mediumship. The woman seemed to be able to produce ectoplasmic pseudopods from her vagina or naval which could form into hands and even faces and some people were convinced she was the real deal (particularly when photographs were taken) but Myers was more skeptical and didn’t always believe her apports were always real.
In case you don’t know, ectoplasm is a substance or spiritual energy supposedly exteriorized by adept physical mediums. The word was first coined in 1894 by psychical researcher Charles Richet and although the term is now widespread in popular culture, there is no scientific evidence the substance has ever existed at all or indeed, ever will.
After Myers death, his studies were compiled into a large volume called ‘Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death’ and this lengthy tome covered such things as research into the unconscious mind, the paranormal, supernormal phenomenon, the existence of a soul and this book became a kind of bible of the British psychical researchers, and inspired others to enter the field, including the writer, Aldous Huxley.
Despite all of the fakery which had been exposed many people were starting to become convinced that science might somehow help us open up a line of communication with the dead. Researchers were now claiming to take photographs of ghosts and even capture their voices on early recording equipment. It seemed for a while that the veil between life and death was becoming thinner and thinner and a breakthrough was imminent.
Some mediums became very famous, particularly two brothers, Rudy and Willie Schneider, who were well known ‘cabinet mediums’. One or both would be tied up inside a cabinet, a curtain would be pulled across the entrance and then all sorts of phenomena would occur around the room with objects being thrown and people touched.
Enter Harry Price (dates) , a very strange and controversial individual who first came to the attention of the press, when he took up an early interest in space telegraphy and claimed he’d set up a receiver and a transmitter between Telegraph Hill, Lewisham, and St Peter’s Church, Brockley, and captured a spark on a photographic plate. However later evidence showed he’d never actually conducted the experiment but merely released a press release purporting to have done so.
This is absolutely typical of Price, a man who had no real scientific training at all, but when his father died in 1906, he inherited a share in a paper firm, which gave him independent means and allowed him to follow his interests. Price did not believe all medium were faking and endorsed a few he believed to be genuine.
In 1929 he brought the Schneider brothers to England, and conducted experiments at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, a laboratory established by the Society for Psychical Research, in which one of the mediums was connected to a series of pressure switches that would alert observers if he moved his hands, feet, limbs in any significant way and he was also physically restrained during some of the experiments(see below).
Price recorded that despite these controls various phenomena were still observed including levitating objects, but according to Price, a photo taken on April 28, 1932, showed that one of the brothers had managed to free his arm and move a handkerchief from a table. Remember the room was in complete darkness.
After this expose, Price became the go-to guy as the debunker of fake mediums, the real-deal paranormal scientific investigator of his day and he became very famous and went on to study a huge number of cases around England and Europe. His final and most longstanding investigation was a project he instigated at Borely Rectory in Essex which he rented for a year and staffed with a rotating crew of volunteer paranormal investigators, many of whom reported all sorts of manifestations and movements, leading Price to make the building notorious as ‘the most haunted house in England.’
At this point I have to mention my favorite paranormal case, the mind-blowing story of the Talking Mongoose. Price was integral player in these bizarre events, as was another well know paranormal investigator of his day, Nador Fodor and both wrote extensively about the bizarre events which were supposedly occurring on the Isle of Man.
In September 1931, the Irving family(above), consisting of James, Margaret, and a 13-year-old daughter named Voirrey were living in a remote farmhouse on the Island and trying to scratch a living raising sheep. All was normal for a while until the family claimed to hear persistent scratching, rustling, and vocal noises behind their farmhouse’s wooden wall panels and sometimes a small creatures which resembled a ferret could be seen moving extremely quickly around the property. According to the Irvings, the creature eventually learned to talk and once it had, the animal introduced itself and told them he was a mongoose born in New Delhi in 1852.
According to Voirrey, who saw the creature the most, Gef was about the size of a small rat with yellowish fur and a large bushy tail. Many famous people including Price and Fodor made long trips to visit the remote property but the mongoose never showed itself to them but both purported to hear it.
Sadly, Price was not the scientist he pretended to be and after his death the vast majority of his work was completely debunked by two of his former colleagues, Richard Lambert and Trevor Hall in their book – ‘Search for Harry Price’. They proved that he’d faked much of his evidence, seemingly in a quest for fame and wealth.
As a young medical student my father entered into a correspondence with Price shortly before his death and started a correspondence with him until he died. When I was boy I found Price’s books in my father’s collection, surrounded by books about science and history and became fascinated by both Price and the paranormal as my father had been.
By the 1930’s mediumship and talking to the dead became a big deal, and there were a lot of people making a lot of money playing on peoples bereavement and emotions by faking communication with their recently decreased loved ones and other people trying to either study the supposed phenomena or shut down the fakers.
One of the most famous mediums was Daniel Hume, 1833-1886, a Scottish physical medium, with the reported ability to levitate at will, speak to the dead, and produce intelligent rapping noises in response to questions. At one famous séance several witnesses claimed to see him float out of a third story room of a large house and float in another.
So many fake mediums being exposed the authorities began to get involved –particularly after World War One – when there was a huge upsurge in mediumship as people tried to talk to their relatives who’d been killed in the war.
In 1926, a medium called Helen Duncan developed from being a clairvoyant to a physical medium and began offering séances in which she claimed to be able to permit the spirits of recently deceased persons to actually materialize in a physical form via ectoplasm produced from her mouth
In 1928, the photographer Harvey Metcalfe attended a series of séances at Duncan’s home and during one he some flash photos of Duncan and her alleged spirit guide, ‘Peggy’. His photographs reveal that the spirits were crudely produced and Peggy was nothing more than a doll made from a painted papier-mâché mask draped in an old sheet. Remember again, that most people only saw these manifestations in almost complete darkness.
In a séance on 6 January 1933 in Edinburgh, a sceptical sitter suddenly grabbed ‘Peggy’ and the lights were turned on revealing that this time she’d been made with an old stockinet under vest.
The under vest went on to be used as evidence at Duncan’s conviction of fraudulent mediumship at the Edinburgh Sheriff Court trial on 11 May 1933 and she was fined ten pounds. In 1944, Duncan was one of the last people convicted under the Witchcraft Act 1735 which made falsely claiming to procure spirits an actual crime.
On her release in 1945, Duncan promised to stop conducting séances, but she was arrested during another in 1956 and died at her home in Edinburgh a short time later. Her trial almost certainly contributed to the repeal of the Witchcraft Act 1735, which was replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act in 1951.
Another very interesting person to enter this strange field was Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes novels.
You might think that this extremely intelligent man, a former doctor and the creator of the world’s most famous detective, wouldn’t be easily fooled by fake phenomenon and frauds, but unfortunately he was credulous as Holmes was wise.
In 1887 he began a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena and attended about 20 seances, experiments in telepathy, and sittings with mediums. Writing to spiritualist journal, ‘Light’, that year, he declared himself to be a spiritualist and he went on to have sittings with many famous mediums and declared the majority to be absolutely genuine and that they were really speaking to the dead.
In 1920, Doyle traveled to Australia and New Zealand on spiritualist missionary work and over the next several years, until his death, he toured Britain, Europe, United States as a ‘spiritualist missionary’.
Now we come to the case of the Cottingly Fairys – like the case of the Talking Mongoose, it amazing that anyone took it seriously but they did.
In 1917 two cousins Elsie Wright(16) and Francis Griffiths(9), were living in Cottingly, near Bradford in England. One day the young women asked to borrow Elsie’s father’s camera and used it to take some photos down at a nearby brook which purported to show them interacting with fairies.
The photos soon came to the attention of Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he’d been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 issue of The Strand magazine.
You’ve got to remember, the photography was pretty early at this stage, and a lot of people were producing photographs which seemed to show ghosts, although I think we know now how easy it is to manipulate a photograph and the same was the case back then
In 1976 Elsie and Frances were interviewed for a TV programme and denied fabricating the photos but in 1983, the cousins admitted in an article published in the magazine ‘The Unexplained’, most of the photographs had been faked, although both maintained that they really had seen fairies. Elsie admitted she had copied illustrations of three dancing fairies from a book and supporting them with cardboard and hatpins.
One has to wonder if Doyle’s credulity regarding fairies came from his fathers own fascination with the ‘fairy realm. His father was an artist who suffered from depression and alcoholism and spent much of his time painting fairies. In 1881 Doyle’s family had to send him to Blairerno House, a “home for Intemperate Gentlemen” but after several escapades, he was sectioned in 1885 after managing to “procure drink”, which caused him to become aggressively excited, confused and incoherent for several days afterwards. He was admitted to Sunnyside, Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum but while there, his depression grew worse, and he began experiencing epileptic seizures and problems with short-term memory loss due to the effects of long-term drinking but despite this he continued to produce volumes of drawings and watercolours in sketchbooks with fantasy themes such as elves, faerie folk, and scenes of death and heavenly redemption (see painting below).
His famous son became so fascinated with fairies he actually wrote a book called ‘The Coming of the Fairies(1922)’ showcasing the Cottingly photos, as well as including some material from around the world, including New Zealand.
Here is an excerpt from the book.
‘The wide distribution of the fairies may be judged by the following extremely interesting narrative of Mrs Hardy, the wife of a settler in the Maori districts of New Zealand.
“After reading about what others have seen, I am encouraged to give you an experience of mine which happened about five years ago. One evening when it was getting dusk, I went into the yard to hang some tea towels on the clothesline. As I stepped off the veranda, I heard the sound of soft galloping coming from the direction of the orchard. I thought I must be mistaken in that the sound came from the road where the Maoris often galloped their horses. I crossed the yard to get to the clothesline and as I stood underneath it with my arms uplifted to peg a tea towel on the line I was aware of the galloping noise very close behind me and suddenly a little figure riding a tiny pony ran right under my uplifted arms. I stood round to see that I was surrounded by eight or ten tiny figures on tiny ponies like dwarf Shetlands. The little figure who came so close to me stood out quite clearly in the light that came from the window but he had his back to it and I could not see his face. The faces of the others were quite brown, also the ponies were brown. They were like tiny dwarfs or children of about two years old.
I was very startled and I cried out, goodness – What is this? I think I must have frightened them for at the sound of my voice they all rode off through the rose trellis across the drive and down the shrubbery.
I heard the soft galloping dying away into a distance and I listened till the sound was gone and then went into the house. My daughter who has had several psychic experiences of her own said to me, mother how white and startled you look, what have you seen and who are you speaking to just now in the yard?
I said, – I have seen the fairies ride.”
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This brings to a close my short trip through the early days of paranormal research and now I want to discuss some happenings closer to home.
MY OWN RECENT ‘PARANORMAL RESEARCH’AND EXPERIENCES
Inverlochy Art School (Wellington)
One day in 2009 I was teaching a children’s class at an old art school in Wellington which had a long reputation for being haunted but nothing ever happened to me and I didn’t believe it was until one day I was teaching a group of children during an after-school holiday programme how to make clay heads and one of the children didn’t turn up for class.
It was the last class of term and I knew I wouldn’t see the child again so while I was teaching the other children I absentmindedly turned the child’s rudimentary sculpture into quite a scary looking demon. After the children had gone I went out of the room for a moment to the kitchen next door and when I returned shortly afterwards somebody or something had taken my tea cup and pushed it into the demon’s ‘mouth’ before putting the empty cup back down on the table. You can clearly see the circular mark the cup made in the clay around the mouth. (see photo below). As far as I knew the school was completely empty.
I found out later that another tutor had one of her prints damaged in a very similar way the night before when a tin can was placed on the wet print before being moved to another position on the table.
The art school seemed to be a lot more ‘active’ in the 1990’s and early 2000’s and I have met the witnesses who are interviewed in this documentary below who both corroborated their accounts.
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DUNEDIN STRANGE OCCURRENCES SOCIETY
In 2020 Oliver Miller and myself set up the Dunedin Strange Occurrences Society – a paranormal study group allied with the NZ Strange Occurrences Society and Dunedin Paranormal. Some of the places we have spent the night(s) at include-
The Tunnel Hotel(Port Chalmers)
Opened in 1846 this was the oldest pub in the South Island, older than the founding of the province of Otago itself by two years thanks to a magistrate on the first surveyor ship and a licence to sell alcohol thought more pressing by the sealers and whalers than democracy. Many people agree that that the building is very haunted –particularly the top floor on the right where one of the former publicans used to live. We spent a few nights there after a resident in the building told us his wardrobe had fallen over at 2am in the morning and that he often heard strange noises. We spent a few nights there and it definitely had a ‘vibe’. I would like to have spent longer but the building changed hands and the current owner has completely gutted the interior and won’t allow us access.
Quote from a former resident – “I lived there for 13 years – definitely haunted! Those little stairs from the bathroom – had a bad vibe. I saw a ghost many times down the end of top floor – where the other bathrooms where – terrifying! Used to sprint to get down the stairs!
My son who was about two years old at the time used to tell me about the lady with the dark hair in his bedroom.”
Chicks Hotel (Port Chalmers)
The hotel was built in 1876 by former Port Chalmers mayor Henry “Harry” Dench, on the site of his Jerusalem Coffee and Chop House and Billiard Saloon, which he opened in 1864.
At least four of the Dench family children died in infancy in the hotel and now lie buried in the old Port Chalmers cemetery. Sadly, such a death toll among youngsters was not uncommon in the 19th Century in Aotearoa. (NB. some sources attribute these deaths to Chick’s family but I have it on good authority it was the children from the Dench family).
The hotel was built on the site of the original Port Chalmers jail which probably explains the small rooms with fire places in the basement.
Local carrier George Chick bought the hotel in 1879 after he arrived in Port Chalmers from England on ‘The Challenger’ in 1870, working his passage as second steward.
Chick drowned in the shipwreck of the ‘The Wairarapa’ in 1894 aged 47 after he went to pick up his brother-in-law, who also drowned in the wreck.
Hugh McArthur, Captain Robert Scott’s carpenter on this second voyage, reputedly died in the hotel on his way Antarctica with ‘The Discovery’, when his bed caught fire in 1914 (possibly from a rolled up piece of cloth in his pocket soaked in solvents self –igniting or being lit from a dropped cigarette).
In 1976, George Beatson climbed the fire escape out front and entered room five via the window where he shot to death his wife, Joan(age 33) and her lover, Peter Chapman(33), before killing himself later that day.
I personally didn’t get any vibes from Chicks but we weren’t there long and it would be interesting to go back and spend some more time there but like The Tunnel Hotel the building is now empty and in a poor state of repair.
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Dunback Inn (Dunback)
This old pub was built in 1864. We have spent a couple of night there thanks to the hospitality of the owners – Liz and Rob. Both report seeing or ‘feeling’ figures in the building and some guests have complained about being disturbed in one of the bedrooms. One night a movement sensor went off at 2am but I don’t think this was paranormal.
Hawksbury – formerly Cherryfarm Hospital (north of Dunedin)
A local resident is convinced part of the lower hospital grounds are an active hot-spot for strange occurrences and provided this photo(below) of a light anomaly floating above the ground. There used to be an old water-powered mill on the site which was built by early settler, Johnnie Jones sometime around 1850. According to our informant the anomaly materialized in front on him and floated about the centre of where the A frame building is the old photograph.. Strange lights are often associated with water movement, as well as underground fault systems so there might be a natural explanation rather than a paranormal one. We haven’t been there at night yet but its on the ‘to-do’ list.
The Rope Walk.
In 1876 a local company started making rope and eventually constructed a long 300 metre ‘rope walk’, a long building where strands of fibre the length of the finished rope were laid out and twisted together to create the final product. This ‘rope walk’ building ceased to be used to produce rope in 2012, but remains standing in South Dunedin. A worker was supposedly killed when he was caught in the machinery at the start of the rope walk and is purported to sometimes appear in the area.
To finish off here is an interesting story which happened to a friend of mine.
Together with her partner and her sister they rented an old house in a tiny village called Coln St Aldwyns for a few days in 1994 to spend the Christmas break in so they could get out of London. That night they were wrapping up their presents when my friend saw the roll of tape she’d been using float across the room. Like many poltergeist manifestations she said the object looked more like it was being carried by something invisible rather than be thrown with force. This is the only time in her life before or since she’s seen something like that. The next morning she got up early leaving the other two in bed to take a photo of the house and the frost outside. It wasn’t until later that she noticed there seems to be a figure standing in front of the curtains on the first story window on the left. When the figure is enlarged it looks like a man wearing a white shirt and jeans. You can tell its not a reflection because she took some other photos of the house later and the figure isn’t there and she also took one with the same curtains open and her dog in the window.
It is poltergeists I am particularly interested in and I propose to do another article focusing just on them in the near future. If you know of an active haunted building in the Dunedin (NZ) area which we might be able to get access to please don’t hesitate to get touch.
Mahalski 
