Category: haunted

Horror Cinema: Our House

Ghost stories are my favorite, and I was excited to discover Our House, a full-on supernatural, ghost-story movie. While I love ghost stories, a good one is difficult to find, and I was impressed by this one. The incorporation of the ghosts into the narrative was natural and sympathetic at first, and their slow growth into sinister forces was suspenseful and interesting. A solid take on a ghost story and a good movie!

Scott Burns, Anthony. Our House, IFC Midnight / Elevation Pictures, 2018.

Ghastly Appearance of a Headless Woman

Many popular Victorian newspapers regularly printed reports of spectral sightings and ghostly visitations, and one British publication that did this with particular gusto was the Illustrated Police News.

In January 1898, it was reported that a mysterious figure with
“the ghastly appearance of a headless woman” was haunting an isolated crossroad outside of Buckingham. The phantom was first witnessed by a well-known local farmer and his companion who had the misfortune of encountering the wraith while driving his “horse and trap.” “The night was well advanced and dark,” when suddenly the farmer saw standing a few yards in front of him a black object near a weather beaten hand-post at the corner of the cross-roads. He called out as the figure was blocking his path but there was no answer and the figure remained motionless.

As he got closer, he noticed the other worldly appearance of the woman and his horse began to “tremble like a leaf.” In shock, he called out again, “What do you do there? Move on, please.” Again, he was met with no response. The horse panicked and backed into a ditch, forcing the farmer’s companion to jump down to seize the reigns. Suddenly, “the queer visitant disappeared,” but, as the pair got back in the trap to flee, the “black sombre figure” appeared again “in the same motionless position as before.”

“Their situation was now getting positively serious. The farmer whose presence of mind had stood him in good stead, now finding his nerve on the point of giving way, asked the apparition in the name of God to speak. Then it was that the spectra slowly drifted away, and appeared to float through the thick set bordered hedge.”

Numerous others later claimed to witness the ghost and the reporter commented that it was “not a little surprising that the spot referred to has been less frequented of late.”

Read other Victorian reports of ghosts at Ghosts of the Past: Historic News Reports of Victorian Hauntings

Seance

This 1920 “spirit photo” by William Hope claims to show a spirit hand moving the table. (Via the National Media Museum’s Flickr page)
In the 1910s, magician William S. Marriott demonstrates how he could make a table appear to levitate with his foot. (From the Mary Evans Picture Library/Harry Price)
An engraving from the April 2, 1887, edition of “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper” shows a séance with a floating guitar and a spirit hand writing messages. (Courtesy of MysteriousPlanchette.com)
The sheet music for 1920’s “Weegee Weegee Tell Me Do” shows lovers playing with a talking board. (From the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University)
This 1865 broadsheet reads, “These Pictures are intended to show that Modern Spiritualism of A.D. 1865 … was described and practised thousands of years since under the names of Witchcraft.” (Via WikiCommons)

Images and captions from an interesting and detailed article on spiritualism from Collectors Weekly, Ghosts in the Machines: The Devices and Daring Mediums That Spoke for the Dead.

Ireland’s Haunted Leap Castle

Image from Ireland Before You Die: The World’s Most Haunted Castle Is in Ireland

Built somewhere between the 13th and late 15th century, this Irish castle has seen more gruesome deaths than a Game of Thrones wedding. As legend has it, during a struggle for power within the O’Carroll clan (which had a fondness for poisoning dinner guests), one brother plunged a sword into another, a priest, as he was holding mass in the castle’s chapel. The room is now called “The Bloody Chapel,” and the priest is said to haunt the church at night. And the horror doesn’t end there. During castle renovations in the early 1900s, workmen found a secret dungeon in the Bloody Chapel with so many human skeletons, they filled three cartloads when hauled away. The dungeon was designed so that prisoners would fall through a trap door, have their lungs punctured by wooded spikes on the ground, and die a slow, horrific death within earshot of the sinister clan members above.

From Condé Naste: 15 Haunted Castles Around the World