It’s almost Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day and the supermarkets and online retailers are cranking up supply to meet a demand they created.
When I was young, Halloween was folded into Bonfire Night. We carved lanterns out of manglewurzels that my dad grew on the estate farm to feed livestock over the winter.
One of the key actors in celebrating Halloween is the ghost. At this time of year, the media will be featuring stories about ghosts and ghostly happenings and Bylines is no different. That being said, the difference in the Bylines approach is looking at the cultural reasons for the belief in ghosts.
Reports of the paranormal
A typical example of this phenomenon is the BBC story about ghostly happenings at Blue Bell Hill, a road long rumoured to be haunted. The BBC prides itself on its truthfulness, fact-finding, and impartiality, but occasionally even Auntie Beeb loosens her stays and writes complete waffle. The A229 Blue Bell Hill in Kent is not a quiet country lane, shrouded in mist and mystery; it is a trunk route and link road with a congestion problem and any ghost daft enough to haunt the road would be mowed down by the heavy traffic.
Even the Guardian and English Heritage have got in on the act with their Faceless Figures story which allegedly shows a faceless ghost on CCTV. Ghosts and castles often go together as even dear old Walmer, which has spent most of its 500-year life in peace and tranquility, has report sightings of the Duke of Wellington’s ghost dating back to the 1860s, a decade after he died at Walmer.
The ghost and the holy spirit
What is it about ghosts, phantoms, and spectres that still fascinates the public? We have probably told ghost stories since time immemorial, based on the belief that we are both spiritual and temporal until the spiritual releases with our final breath. Religions of course rely on this belief to educate and control our baser instincts, not always successfully, by promising some sort of afterlife.
G.K.Chesterton is quoted as stating “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything”. But as far as the paranormal is concerned, this does not seem to be true. The National Folklore Survey for England found that one in three people believe in ghosts. In comparison, Kings College’s 2023 survey on religiosity in Britain revealed the UK’s low religious belief compared with other nations.
Belief in God and heaven has decreased over time, but belief in the afterlife has stayed stable even among the young. Is this where belief in the paranormal obtains its support, a decline in piety?
Why do we believe?
Psychology professor Richard Wiseman offers an explanation as to why we believe in the paranormal. He points to two factors: personal experience from recently losing a loved one, and popular media which is replete with stories as outlined above. Wiseman notes that human beings have pattern-making hard wired into their consciousness, and those with a creative turn of mind are especially susceptible to misconstruing what might seem to be quite ordinary circumstances.
Wiseman refers to a study carried out by Dr James Houran where nudges or priming is shown to be a factor in some paranormal events. Houran arranged for groups to be shown the same building (a disused cinema) with one group being told that they were on an architectural visit, and the other being told of paranormal activity. The study found that the architectural group reported nothing but the paranormal group declared to have experienced things.
Mass hysteria or shared sighting?
How do these dual factors explain mass sightings of such phenomena? Let’s take the case of the Ghostly Battle of Edgehill.
In 1642, the inconclusive battle of Edgehill was fought in a day, leaving many corpses to rot on the battlefield. That Christmas, it was reported that the battle was being refought by ghostly apparitions. These apparitions were reported in a publication which came to the notice of King Charles I, who sent a commission to investigate the matter. The commission allegedly reported that indeed that the battlefield was haunted. Shortly after, the field was cleared of corpses and the dead were buried. The ghostly sightings then reduced, but it is still alleged that from time to time, the sounds of the battle can still be heard. The battle of Naseby fought in 1645 produced similar paranormal phenomenons, but is less well-known than the ghosts of Edgehill. The aftermath of Edgehill is unique in military history in having a commission and report of ghostly goings on.
I think the treatment of the dead after the battle and the apparent paranormal activity are not unconnected, and that the fact of the former gave rise to reports of the latter. The fact the apparitions reduced in frequency after burying the bodies suggests it reduced the fear of the paranormal. Subsequent sightings can be put down to Wiseman’s expectation of the paranormal.
Smoke and mirrors
Ghosts have become big business and no self-respecting castle or stately home today is complete without one. The village of Pluckley, however, has taken this to the limit, with its reputation of being the spookiest village in the country. Not all is as it seems however.
In his book Pluckey: The making and faking of a ghost story, Ed Adams alleges that existing myths were enlarged, and possibly fabricated, to deter the building of a motorway through parts of a nearby wood. The recruitment of the paranormal to further the ends of NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) is interesting, if not unique. Possibly there were not enough natterjack toads, bats, or Badgers to go around. Since then Pluckley has rested on its paranormal celebrity. Apart from Ed Adams, the UWE Bristol has, if not debunked some of this, set it into context. This has not stopped social media from running wild with all sorts of stories.
It might be as long as there are human beings on this earth, there will be ghost stories. Pluckley and English Heritage can rest easy in that certainty.
My conclusion
So where does this leave us? I think it is as fascinating to consider why people see ghosts, as it is to actually see one. I don’t think people are mad or unhinged in claiming to have had a paranormal experience, but instead I believe it is the fallible human mind making 2+2 add up to 5.
I have been in the Duke of Wellington’s bedroom many times, but have never seen anything to indicate a visitation from him, which is a pity because I would like to ask him some questions about why he fought the battle of Waterloo as he did.
