Haunted Churches

What spirits (holy and otherwise) haunt churches? Women in white, ghostly clergymen, fairies, angels, organist twins, naughty nuns, and giant maggots. Simon and Chris bicker, in this ecclesiastical outing, about consecrated ground, wimples, the recording properties of stones, the mental health of vicars' families and double dipping. Chris tells of infernal churches in the States, while Simon pontificates about church porches where the dead foretell the coming year. In just forty-five minutes expect to learn: how to get to hell via a church; why churches are like muzzled dogs; and where to get a glimpse of Jimmy Garlick (bring a shilling).

Transcript

[Simon] Why? Why would you bring this? Why would you bring this into our precious podcast space? 

[Chris] Because there's lots of ghosts in churches. We're going to, you know, we cover ghosts, we cover paranormal things, and there's lots of haunted churches.

[Simon] Well, I have some doubts about what you've just said, but let's get to that in a few minutes. But for now, I imagine that your background with churches has to do mainly with your musical vocation, the fact you're a talented organist.

[Chris] Well, I've spent a lot of time sitting in darkened churches, and not because I was ghost hunting, but because I was practicing. So yes, I've spent a lot of time in churches. I started playing professionally when I was 11, so a long history there. How about you? Do you spend much time in church, or do you have a favorite local church?

[Simon] My favorite church, perhaps in the world, is San Miniato in Florence, this extraordinary 11th century church built in the Orthodox style, essentially. Whereas down in the valley, just 100 years later, they built another church, Santa Croce. And Chris, it's like walking in a barn. It just leaves me absolutely cold.

[Chris]

Yes. We have that problem here. So many of the modern churches look like banks, or they're just like a big auditorium. There's no sacred imagery, really. I mean, you might have a cross, if you're lucky. You probably won't have stained glass, because it's not your father's church. It's got to look all modern or something. I'm not quite sure what the motivation is. And unfortunately, I've seen this in music as well. They've got what are called praise bands, and a lot of people like them, but it's just very simplistic, repetitive music that has nothing to do for me with any kind of spiritual uplift.

[Simon] But from what you're saying, you might almost suspect that this was a comment about what in the UK we used to call low Protestantism, the low church, but the attempt to escape from ornamentation. But for instance, the church I just talked about, Santa Croce, is full to the gills with decoration, and yet it just it doesn't work. Well, now we've got this out of our system, perhaps we can turn to ghosts in church themselves. Do you want to kick us off with a reading?

[Chris] Well, this reading, this was told to a woman in 1907 by her husband's friend. When I was about 12 or 13, he said, I visited some relatives in a village near London. About 11 o'clock one morning, I went with the vicar's two boys with whom I was friendly to get a book from the vestry of the church where their father officiated. The elder of the two boys went to get the book while the younger one and I went down the aisle to wait and to pass the time until the book was found. Hearing a sound, I thought my playmate was coming for us and looked up towards the chancel. Walking across the chancel, I saw a tall figure shrouded in a sort of blanket affair, dull and drab and gathered on the top of the head and tied in a bunch from which it hung down and folds over the figure, which was walking or gliding towards the vestry door. There was no sound of footfalls, but as the apparition moved, it made a sort of rustling noise like walking amongst dry withered leaves. Thinking someone was playing a trick, I followed hoping to see the fun, but the figure vanished at the vestry door.

[Simon] I was really enjoying that, Chris, and then I thought this sounds familiar. Is it possible, I can't believe you would do this, but is it possible that you've read this in a previous episode of our podcast?

[Chris] Absolutely. We did an episode on shrouds and that ghost was perfectly described as wearing one of those shrouds that knots on the top of the head. I call them Christmas cracker shrouds because they're top and bottom, sort of twisted in the middle.

[Simon] Well, I call this double dipping. I don't think you can reuse readings in this way.

[Chris] Oh, well. This is the first I've heard of it.

[Simon] Well, you'll be hearing a lot more.

[Chris] From your solicitor.

[Simon] From my solicitor. Expect a letter in the morning. It was a lovely piece and it has that thing I associate with you that is slight M.R. James twinge to it.

[Chris] And of course, M.R. James wrote lots of ecclesiastical ghost stories.

[Simon] Well, this is something I wanted to get onto. And I think if we're talking about churches, we need to have a reckoning about what we mean by churches. Because one thing I've learned with supernatural encounters is that churches have different parts to them. Let's start with some obvious exclusions. We're not going to be including the rectory. Surely that's an episode in itself.

[Chris] It is. There's so many haunted rectories and almost more than churches. It's quite an odd thing.

[Simon] I'm tempted to add there are so many screwed up vicar's families. I think this is the. But yeah, so rectories for another time. Agreed. But even if you think of the church, the church for me, in supernatural terms, breaks down into different parts. First of all, we have the graveyard around the church. Then we have the church itself. But the church, too, breaks down into bits. You have the porch, which has important associations in British folklore. And I think in American folklore, you have the bell tower and then you have the church itself inside. And I think one, or perhaps my first, perhaps my first gunfire in this episode would be the following. But supernatural experiences in graveyards? Yes. Supernatural experiences in porches? You bet. Supernatural experiences in bell towers? Often. But supernatural experiences in churches? I'm a little bit sceptical about that. Now, I overwhelmingly look at 19th century material and there I wouldn't expect to see that many ghosts or ghostlings walking through churches.

[Chris] But I just read a story about a ghost in a church.

[Simon] Oh, come on.

[Chris] It's inside.

[Simon] Some made up thing from 1908.

[Chris] No, it was told to her in 1907 and it happened many years before when the friend was a child.

[Simon] Well, I hope that your trusting nature, Chris, keeps you safe because I'm a little bit anxious at this point. I suggest that we continue with the episode and let's just see where the ghosts fall. But I can't help but point out that 1907 is not the 19th century and what some drunk guy near London remembered about his childhood 20 years before. I'm a bit sceptical. And in all seriousness now, one thing I've noticed is a massive uptick of ghosts in the 20th century in churches. And I think in itself that is interesting. And so perhaps we can see if this really plays out or whether you have more in your arsenal ready to bring out.

[Chris] Well, three words. Long 19th century. 

[Simon] I hate it when people play the long 19th century card. Okay. Okay. So we have this little weird experience in Berkshire. Again, let's see how things go. But I acknowledge there are a lot of supernatural experiences in churches, but my experience has been that they tend to be late. And I think a key thing here is the idea of consecrated ground. So something we can agree on. Our ancestors had this incredibly strong sense of consecrated ground when they came from an Episcopalian, an Anglican or a Catholic background. This was the sense that the church had been consecrated in the name of God and evil or the ambivalent would not enter there easily. And one of the things that we have to look out for in British culture, and I suspect also this is true of American culture, is the decline of the idea of consecrated ground and even the decline of the knowledge of consecrated ground. There's a beautiful Thomas Hardy short story from the late 19th century about a young man who is heartbroken because his father, who is a suicide, is buried in unconsecrated ground. And this destroys this young man's life. And you think today, I mean, if your local vicar said, sorry, we can't put him or her in the graveyard, you just say, look, gov, I was going to get my mom cremated anyway and scatter her ashes on a cliff somewhere. We just completely lost this idea of consecrated ground. And my personal theory is we get a lot more ghosts in churches in the 20th century because of the decline in the idea of consecrated ground.

[Chris] So your thought is that the ghosts mainly haunt the church yards as opposed to the actual church building, except maybe for the porch.

[Simon] Absolutely. This is one of the reasons we really get misled because we just talk rather vaguely about churches and ghosts. When you look at the 19th century accounts, you're correct. There are tons of references to people being frightened of graveyards or ghosts in graveyards. But this is the place, it is consecrated, I acknowledge, but it's got all these rather dubious people buried there. Whereas the church itself is seen as being this pure place, it's where the altar is, it's where mass is held, it's where transubstantiation takes place. It's like the heart of the nuclear reactor. And so you have next to each other in your typical English village, the most dangerous place in supernatural terms, the graveyard and the safest place, the body of the church itself. And sometimes in private and lyrical moments, I like to think of graveyard as being a rabid dog that is muzzled by the church. 

The church keeps the community safe. The graveyard instead is this place of unstable radiation round about the church.

[Chris] Now in this book called Haunted Churches of England by Graham McEwan, he comments that why should there be so many haunted churches, which he was writing about. And they weren't all 19th century, some were 20th century stories. But he says, if there's any truth in the theory that intense human emotions can somehow leave their print on surroundings such as stone walls, it's hardly surprising there should be so many ecclesiastical ghosts. For centuries, churches have been the focal point for deep human emotions, joy at weddings and baptisms, grief at funerals, supplication in times of hunger and pestilence, fear and hatred in times of civil war. What do you make of that?

[Simon] I agree with that word for word. I think that's a really perceptive comment. It's just that unlike you, Chris, I don't think that emotions rub off on church walls. But I acknowledge that it is a central place in the community and that it is a place of drama in the same way that the English pub is or the tithe barn or God help us the or the village green where they play cricket. But I think that it has this idea that it's a supernaturally safe place. And I hope a little bit later, if you allow me to get away with it, to sneak some angels in. I think that is the one form of the supernatural that you do sometimes come across in churches.

[Chris] Wow, that's the one I run across least in churches. So I'll be interested to hear your stories. So who are the British church ghosts, if there are any? Are they clerics? Are they religious? What are their origin stories?

[Simon] Of course, I would say that there aren't that many, but when you do get them, they tend to be, I know a couple of examples, 20th century examples, I should say, of vicars, people who actually were connected to the church.

[Chris] Yeah, and lots of monks as well, I think, because a lot of the churches were connected with monasteries. What I find fascinating, and we have examples of this over here as well, is when you have a place that there wasn't any organized monastery, but suddenly monks or nuns are seen, ghostly religious are seen in the area. For example, the Bordley Church stories, the haunted rectory burned down, and it almost seemed like psychic investigators transferred all their enthusiasm to this church. The rector, A.C. Henning, wrote about mysterious footsteps inside and outside of the church, ghostly organ music, and singing in a locked church, and doors being mysteriously locked on a Sunday school class, and things moving in the church, but they all kind of lacked the panache. Harry Price's investigative narratives about a mysterious nun who was walled up or buried in the basement. One ghost, though, that seems to have made the jump from the rectory property to the church was this ghostly nun, and a former rector claimed he saw the nun walking slowly behind him as he left the church porch, and apparently she's still seen. In 1949, a local clergyman claimed to have seen, quote, the ghost of the unhappy nun of Bordley Rectory who was bricked up alive a century ago by a shocked mother superior. I sigh, because I'm always skeptical when there's nuns seen in these places with no history of convents, and I wonder if they're mistaking the medieval wimple of a married woman or a widow for a nun's headdress, because it's almost identical.

[Simon] Yes, I too have noticed this insane number of unhappy monks and walled up nuns, and I just wonder if maybe you could go even further than your wimple and say that it's just something to do with the material vagueness of ghosts that you would associate them with cloaks that could easily be read in a monastic key, or maybe we need to play the fairy card and say your rule about people wearing the clothes of 400, 500 years ago, maybe it's just a way to make ghosts early modern or medieval.

[Chris] And there was such a vogue for neo-medievalism in the late 19th century, and then you find, you know, the gothic novels with all the nuns being walled up and things like that, so it was definitely sort of in the air in an aesthetic sense.

[Simon] Maybe also in thinking again of the good old 19th century, it's interesting to look at the idea of nuns and monks in folk culture, in the culture of the people as opposed to those who were going through an education in the country's universities or higher schools, and there people knew that nuns and monks were holy individuals who had vanished, and I think in themselves they take on this characteristic of something that could almost be a little bit angelic, or I know they come from a Catholic background and that worried, good British Protestants, but they had this vibe, let's say, that made them quite exciting and potentially powerful, and I think that may be one of the reasons they keep appearing as well.

[Chris] That's a good point, yes. I have to mention that in 1919, it was reported in the papers that the ghost of Thomas Becket had been seen in Canterbury Cathedral and he'd been photographed. It was sort of a shadowy form against one of the pillars in the crypt, so who knows? 

[Simon] Can I check the date for that, please? 

[Chris] 1919. Long 19th century.

[Simon] No, no, no, no, no. Listen, I'm sorry, if you are going to play the long 19th century card, that ends with the Battle of the Somme. We are not including 1919 in any...

[Chris] Okay, how about 1910? 1910, I got you. Here's the quote, one photograph showed a dim figure of the prelate against a pillar while another snapshot taken from the same position but on a different day revealed no such appearance. Rationalists explain that an ancient fresco on the pillar painted out at the Reformation becomes visible through the overlaid material during damp weather. 1910, London Chronicle.

[Simon] I'm disappointed in your stubbornness, Chris, but I have in front of me a piece of paper where I'm writing down examples of 19th century ghosts and the page is virgin for now.

[Chris] Well, it won't be for long. We'll see, we'll see. Let me explain some of the problems. One problem is that the stories of the haunted churches appear in spiritualist or popular journals or in the press with no date, just vague statements about some years ago or many years ago. It's impossible to prove that the encounter actually took place in the 19th century, no matter how probable it seems. I acknowledge that. There are also modern stories that apparently reference really ancient ghosts, like the lady who somewhere between 1945 and 55 saw the ghost of William Penfold, a clergyman who was murdered in 1357. And he's seen kneeling at the altar in the Church of St. Nia at Poundstock, Cornwall, and then walking straight through a wall. But that's a late story of a very early ghost, and I'm not sure how she thought she recognized him.

[Simon] My piece of paper is still blank, Chris. 

[Chris] All right, let me keep going, scrolling forward. I've got a whole section here. Just let me find it. I'm trembling. Here we are. St. John's Church in Torquay was haunted by not one, but perhaps two phantom organists. Henry Ditton Newman died in 1883 of pleurisy. He was a composer, and he may have felt that his life and work were cut too short, because I think he was like 22 or 23 when he died. Some said that the organ played as his body lay in the church before burial. And shortly after his death, that was in 1883, the vicar, the Reverend Harry William Hitchcock, alone in the church, heard the organ playing and looked up, saw the late organist sitting at the organ. And it said, other such occurrences are recorded even down to the present time, and he's been seen by persons who had never known him and were unaware that St. John's had a ghost. And the organist would feel somebody sitting beside them on the organ bench. And as an organist, I can attest that would be really unsettling, because sometimes in the course of playing the pedals, you're sliding back and forth. To run into something invisible would just be really creepy. The second one, though, is unequivocally 20th century, because about 1956, the tone of the haunting darkened, and the living organist in the choir complained of feeling paralysis and deep depression. A medium was consulted, who described yet another dead organist, one Francis Crute, who had gassed himself in 1953. And since he was a suicide, his body was not brought into the church, but was left outside in the hearse, and there was very little ceremony at the graveside. So finally, a friend of his went to the grave with the vicar, who sprinkled holy water and recited a psalm and prayed for the spirit to find rest. And apparently, this helped dispel the dire atmosphere in the choir loft. 

[Simon] So the same church had two organist ghosts? Yes. And Chris, how many organist ghosts do you know of on planet Earth?

[Chris] Well, I haven't counted up, but it's a good category, because you spend a lot of time there. It's like the vicars, that was their favorite place on Earth, or they were really dedicated to their duties, and so they stayed after death. So I think that probably goes for organists as well.

[Simon] If you ever really wanted to ruin my weekend, let's do an episode on organist ghosts, that would be...

[Chris] Well, I hope I don't become one myself. 

[Simon] No, no doubt. 

[Chris] That would be awkward. No, no. So here's another one. Here's a 19th century one. Jimmy Garlick. He's a famous mummy, and also a ghost, in the Church of St. James. And I hope I'm not mangling this. Garlick Heith in London, designed by Christopher Wren. His body was probably discovered in 1838. The pavement of the church was taken up, and he was put back in the vault, and he was rediscovered in 1855. Should have been properly buried, but he was put in a glass case, and visitors paid small sums to look at it. He was originally kept behind the organ, but was moved to a cupboard in the narthex. So St. James' reputation as a haunted church began after the discovery of the corpse, known as Jimmy Garlick. People claimed to feel a presence in the building. It was theorized it was the ghost of the mummy, because he was unhappy at being put in a glass case. It was also said that the choir boys sometimes paraded him around the church in the 1930s, but they put a stop to that. There's also a story during the Second World War that parishioners spotted a shrouded man walking through the church, and an air raid fireman saw this and shouted out to him to get out of the church, but he faded from sight before the fireman's eyes. But he was seen in the 19th century, and it continued up through the Second World War.

[Simon] Well, I'm going to speak on Jimmy's behalf here. If you take a body that has been put into consecrated ground in a church, bring it above, stick it in a cupboard, and get shillings to show people, you bet that that body's going to come back and haunt you. This is just a punitive and well-deserved method on the part of poor Jimmy. I mean, you have to admit that this is fairly atypical behavior on the part of the church.

[Chris] No.

[Simon] Maybe this is my namby-pamby vegetarian side, but the idea of digging at bodies and displaying them to the congregation seems to be in serious bad taste.

[Chris] Let's consider all the Catholic and corrupt saints in glass cases displayed under the altars in many Catholic churches.

[Simon] But they're honored. They're not being exhibited like a mermaid at the fair.

[Chris] Well, now you talk to the sexton, and he's going to expect, you know, he's rubbing his fingers together for a little cash.

[Simon] I bet he is, and I'm not surprised that Jimmy visits him afterwards. On my virgin sheet, I now do have a couple of squiggles, but I want to continue with this sense that 19th century hauntings of ghosts are not actually that common.

[Chris] Well, I do have a bunch more. Let's see. 1865, 1866, there are three ghosts that are seen before a window at Holy Trinity in York. There a figure in white is walking across the window, and there's also the figures of a nurse and a child, and they kind of pantomime despair and distress. They act like what I've called videotape ghosts. They repeat the same actions over and over They're seen rain or shine. They walk across this window in silhouette, and they sort of pantomime despair, and then they walk apart. Apparently, it appears frequently on Trinity Sunday. It was said to have haunted the church for up to 200 years or so. It was said to be the ghost of a nurse and child who died of plague and were buried outside the walls of the city, and the mother who was buried in the Holy Trinity churchyard. There were claims that the apparitions had been seen since the 17th century. 1876, St. Peter Advencula. After Queen Victoria ordered the floor torn up, an officer had a ladder put up, looked through the window, and saw a procession of the dead, some in Tudor costume. 1883, West Drayton, Middlesex. There's a phantom black bird that is heard and seen around the altar and in the vault, and he's said to have been the restless and miserable spirit of a suicide. By rights, he should have been buried, staked at the crossroads, but the family influence got him into the consecrated ground, but he's still haunting.

[Simon] These are all fascinating examples. Just a couple of tiny comments. First of all, videotape ghosts. It will be a fabulous future episode, Chris, but I would argue that videotape ghosts are late 19th century, 20th century. I don't think they have that much of a history. I think they're the beginning of the 20th century ghost. I acknowledge the 19th century date, but the very way it's described makes me suspicious.

[Chris] No, no, no. That's my description. No one else has described it that way.

[Simon] No, but the very fact you have a scene that is played and replayed, for me, this is not something you get before, say, 1850.

[Chris] No, 1865, 1866 was when it was described in the spiritualist press. Oh, the spiritualist press. I know, I know, but people had seen it. I mean, whole congregations had seen it.

[Simon] We're reliably told. The one that stands out as, for me, a convincing 19th century spirit is the flapping bird. That has a real 19th century sound to it for me. Well, I think we can gently put this question to one side for now, but perhaps we could move on to another part of the church that definitely attracts attention, and this is perhaps the type of legend around the church that most interests me, and these are the porches. Now, first question, do you have porches in U.S. churches? If you go to a U.S. Episcopalian church, is there a porch?

[Chris] No, it seems to not be something that crossed the ocean, and I'm not sure why. One of the earliest Episcopal churches in the country I've been to, it has just sort of a small porch, but it's not someplace where you would normally sit and have a lot of space. It's relatively small.

[Simon] I mean, the important thing about a church in the U.K. with a porch is that you could go into that porch when it was raining, for instance, and it's a big space. It's a space where maybe eight people, six people could sit very comfortably, and so this is part of the supernatural geography of churches, and it's particularly associated with a series of legends about looking into the future, and I'm sure you're familiar with those, Chris. Yeah, they're lovely stories because here you're peeping into the community's future. It's not just individuals' future. The belief is that if you go to the church on Halloween, St. Mark's Night, different nights are suggested for different parts of the country, and you sit in the porch and you wait till midnight, and sometimes there's some associated magic that goes with that. If you wait, though, till midnight, you will see walking into the church, through the churchyard, the members of the community who are expected to die that year, and there's one lovely account from Yorkshire I know where the writer refers to someone who always did this in the village and then really irritated the entire village for the year afterwards because when anyone died, he would look knowingly and say, I knew it, I knew it, and sometimes he would even drop hints that X or Y were about to drop off because of what he'd seen. Not a way to make yourself popular. No. There are lots of different versions of this, but I'm just to share my favourite version from the Welsh Borders, and this would make a great short story if you're interested, Chris. It tells the story of a married couple who were very unhappy in the 19th century, and they independently talked to their friends, and their friends suggested, look, why don't you go to the church porch on this magical night and see if your husband or your wife goes into the church? Because if they do, then the marriage will soon be over. There'll be a coffin in the house, and then you'll be a widow or a widower. And so independently, the husband and the wife go to the church porch.

As they're going there, they spot each other and believe that they have seen the spirit of the other going into the church. They return home blanched and shocked, and they meet each other in the bedroom, and independently, they decide that in the little time left, they will treat their partner very well. Because this poor guy, he's just got four or five months to live. I'll make him his favourite dish every night. I'll massage his feet, whatever it will be. And they go through the year treating each other very well, and very sad in the end that person is going to die. And of course, by the end of the year, their head over heels in love, and neither has died. And at this point, I was going to say the subterfuge, but really the spiritual incompetence of the initial act is understood, and everyone has a jolly good laugh. Now, in some ways, it's one of these weak Victorian morality tales, but I think that a writer like Sarkey, or perhaps even Chris Woodyard, could do real justice to this tale.

[Chris] Well, I love a happy ending. But in my stories, everybody dies, so it's useless.

[Simon] Perhaps not for you. Do you know many porch stories?

[Chris] I don't. I mean, I know the ones from Britain. I don't know any from the United States, because we just don't seem to have that tradition. What I'm seeing is ones where it's not so much you see the spectre of the person going into the church, but hearing the death roll, or hearing the names of those who are going to die.

[Simon] I particularly like the church porch stories, because in the end, it takes us back to a supernatural reality of the 19th century, that if you lived in Village X or Y, you had neighbours, you had families, but you also had the community of the dead, where your ancestors were buried, and where your neighbour's ancestors were buried. And people in the 19th century really did feel a connection to this community of the dead. And this is something that, for good and for bad, we have lost. We've also lost the ability to understand this way of looking at the world, which is perhaps why some people claim that ghosts appear in churches in the 20th century. But I don't want to rub salt in your wounds. We've been talking about this difference between the UK and the US, and I wondered if there are any other differences.

[Chris] What I see in church themes in the UK is strange odours like incense or corpses, bells ringing, singing or organ music, mutterings and footsteps, and spirits that walk through bricked up or sealed doorways, those kinds of things. And we find a lot of that in the United States as well. We have monks in missions, mostly, in the southwestern United States. There's not that many other high-profile monasteries in the United States, so where you're going to find monks is out west, usually. And they're the usual ghostly monks or invisible bell ringers or mysterious chanting. One thing we find a lot of is ghostly soldiers in churches, because so often they were used as hospitals in the Civil War. And the country is full of Civil War ghosts. We also find the usual priests and pastors who are returning to their old haunts. We have women in white. We have a fair number of women in white. For example, in a place not too far from where I live in Springfield, Ohio, there's a church called St. Bernard's Church. And the church sexton went to ring the bell for six o'clock mass, and as he climbs up to the organ loft, he sees a woman in white walking in front of him. Couldn't find her there. And a former sexton said he'd seen the identical ghostly woman in white some eight or ten years earlier. Let's see, Central Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. A couple of guys going home at about 1 a.m. saw a woman ghost dressed in white enter the church, which was all lit up. And she began playing the organ. They tried to enter the church and found the doors locked. And then the woman disappeared and the lights went out. I'm not sure how they saw her disappear, but it was built on the site of the oldest Masonic Hall in the West. And bodies were discovered when it was being constructed. So you find ghosts in lofts in the United States a lot. Bell Towers, kind of a second place for ghosts to appear. And then we have something I'm not sure, I mean, I've seen stories in the Fortean Times about satanic rituals at abandoned churches in the UK. But here we've got satanic churches by the bushel. Also abandoned churches that are the haunt of Satanists. These are urban legend type stories. There's a really bizarre story from St. James Catholic Church and Cemetery in Lamont, Illinois. It's known as Monk's Castle. Supposedly, monks were seen and heard chanting Latin liturgies, even though there's never been any monks known to have lived in the area. In 1977, a police officer actually chased eight ghostly monks supposedly floated out of the woods and headed towards the church, drifting through the tombstones. And it's been suggested that these were actually Satanists in hooded robes. But there's a whole genre of satanic churches. In Ohio, we have a couple. There's an abandoned village called Helltown. Its real name is Boston. Supposedly, satanic church there is the site of many animal mutilations, they say. Naturally, they meet there and hold black masses. And there are upside down crosses on the building. This is another thing that makes me sigh because what it is is an architectural detail in Carpenter Gothic that is interpreted as an upside down cross. There's also Hell's Church in Batavia, Claremont County. It's the remains of a church painted red, burned to the ground over 20 years ago. The legend says that lightning struck the church during a blood ritual on All Hallows' Eve. And there's lots of things like floating orbs and screams and phantom vehicles. And it's said that grass won't grow on the spot where the altar was located. The Wesley Chapel in Menden, Ohio, before the windows were boarded up, you could see the orange glow of hellfire in the basement. And then the gates of hell. This is the last one. They're said to be located on the campus of a place called Kenyon College. And supposedly, the Church of the Holy Spirit sits atop the pit of hell. The chapel is thought to be cursed. It's a 19th century chapel. And there are scorch marks by the windows that they run down, meaning the flame that caused them to burn downward towards the pit of hell. I've been there. I've seen the marks. And they look to me like stains from water running off inadequate gutters or something. But these all are all the sort of same vein of urban legends. We've also got one of the oldest urban legends in the book, the story about a priest who dies before he can complete saying the masses he was paid for. And he has to come back and ask somebody to fulfill those. St. Joseph's Church in Somerset, Ohio, one of the oldest Catholic churches in Ohio, is known as the Old Priory. And I was told that story by one of the people who worked there. He kept, this dead priest kept appearing. And when he was around, it was impossible to keep the altar of candles lit. And finally, somebody said, what do you want? He'd been paid to say a certain number of masses, but had died before completing them. And once the other priest said the masses, he stopped haunting the Old Priory.

[Simon] It's really interesting stuff. Listening to you, I was just considering how with Britain, at least in previous times, the overwhelming number of churches with folklore associated were Anglican churches, because the overwhelming number of the population was Anglican. And I wonder in the United States, with this impressive list you've just given, if there's any kind of denominational breakdown. For instance, the legend of the priest not saying the masses is a medieval legend. It has to be Catholic churches.

[Chris] Yes, yes. And the Old Priory was a Dominican Priory. And St. James Catholic Church, that's the monk's castle. Boston and Helltown, that's a Protestant church. And the Wesley Chapel is obviously a Protestant church. And Kenyon College, the Church of the Holy Spirit, that's a Protestant church. So a lot of these things have translated into the Protestant churches.

[Simon] Interesting. The only parallel that I perhaps recognized was you were talking about the red light seen through the window that was supposed to be hellfire down below. And in Britain, we have lots of 19th century news reports about strange lights in the graveyard, or sometimes in the church. And they seem to be usually tricks of the light playing on marble tombs, or maybe a light from behind the church coming through these very impressive church windows with unusual optical effects. But you sometimes do get these slightly hysterical accounts about these peculiar church lights.

[Chris] We could do a whole episode on glowing tombstones, I think.

[Simon] I have a collection of those.

[Chris] Yeah, me too.

[Simon] Yeah. So there you are. I do hope that one day we'll do an episode on angels because angels are so interesting. But in the 19th century, there are a certain number of angel accounts, particularly from Wales, interestingly, where angels are frequently heard in the heavens singing. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century, we start to get a series of accounts of angels being seen in church during church services. And there's one lovely account by the Bishop of London from around the time of the Great War, saying that he'd been reliably told that children in his congregation had seen angels standing next to him while he was carrying out the service, and particularly during the ritual moments of the mass. And my suspicion here is, again, we can explain this in cultural terms, that in the later 19th century, with reverberations right the way through to the Second World War, there was the so-called Anglo-Catholic strand of Anglicanism, which were these very high Anglicans who were interested in carrying out almost Catholic rituals within the church to keep things simple. And I think that these angel sightings tend to track with high Anglican church, which again would make perfect sense. But it's a nice example of how the supernatural is always influenced by culture.

[Chris] I wonder if they were acolytes or deacons, the children were not familiar with that particular set of attendance at church.

[Simon] Chris, that's beautiful. I can well imagine that happening. You go to see the Bishop of London, it's an unfamiliar church, and there are these guys decked out in white. And afterwards, you're talking to your mom. It makes perfect sense.

[Chris] Could be, yeah.

[Simon] Nice, very nice.

[Chris] We don't have... Angels in the United States hardly ever appear in church, and usually they appear at a deathbed, or they're even seen in people's backyards, marching through the skies. Wow.

[Simon] If I looked out into my garden and saw an angel, I really would be anxious. Look, we need an episode on angels. Angels are a really interesting subject. And of course, they're too often pushed to the side by those interested in the supernatural. Well, look, we've come to the end, and I think we owe it to our listeners to talk about further readings. I know there are four or five books on church ghosts, and for the reasons I set out before, I disapprove of these. But I will just mention that Mark Norman, the British folklorist, published a couple of years ago, a book on haunted churches. If you look for Mark's name, you'll easily find this. But there are also a couple of other books dating back... Did Elliot O'Donnell even write a book on haunted churches?

[Chris] He did. I mean, some of it's suspect. He's got a human-sized maggot in one of the church yards that goes from house to house spreading disease, so take him with a grain of salt. Let's see. Some of the books I was looking at were Church Folklore, a record of some post-Reformation usages in the English church, now mostly obsolete, by James Edward, I'm going to say Vaux, V-A-U-X, 1894. Haunted Borley, A.C. Henning. Haunted Churches and Abbeys of Britain, Mark Alexander. Haunted Churches of England, Ghosts Ancient and Modern by Graham McEwan. Holy Ghosts, Classical Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny, which is in British Library, Tales of the Weird series, edited by Fiona Snalem. These are fictional stories, and I'm sure they contain things like Canon Alberich's scrapbook in the stalls at Barchester Cathedral by M.R. James. One of my favorite ecclesiastical ghost stories is Man's Size in Marble by Edith Nesbitt, about a marble knight effigy that comes to life.

[Simon] That's the one with the finger, isn't it?

[Chris] Yes, it is. Fabulous story. I've got some blog posts that I'll put on our page.

[Simon] Good. And in terms of a final reading, do you have something to play us out with?

[Chris] I do. A lot of things at churches aren't just visual. Here's an example of an aural experience at Bewley Abbey. Among the many people who reported hearing ghostly chanting at Bewley was Michael Sedgwick, curator of the famous Motor Museum. His cottage on the east side of the ruins of the Abbey Church overlooked a plot of land which is thought to have been the monk's burial ground. He heard the chanting of the phantom monks on two occasions, the first just before Christmas, 1959. He'd been working late at night, chain smoking, as he sat at his typewriter, and before going to bed, he opened the windows to let in some fresh air. He said, When I opened the window, I heard it quite distinctly. It was definitely chanting, and very beautiful chanting. It came in uneven waves, as if from a faulty wireless, sometimes quite loud and then fading away. It was just as if a Catholic Mass was being played on the radio in the next flat, but I thought it was curious that someone should have the radio on at that time of night. Anyway, it was so beautiful that I tried to find it on my own wireless. I tell you, I went through every blessed program there was, French, Italian, everything, and I couldn't find it. Later, I was told it was just a common or garden supernatural phenomenon, and as a matter of fact, it had occurred on the night that someone in the village had died.