Paranormal Yakker

Ghost Hoax Mass Hysteria

• Stan Mallow

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Prepare for a spine-tingling journey through Britain's forgotten Christmas tradition - ghost hoaxes that sparked mass hysteria across communities. In this captivating conversation on “Paranormal Yakker” with UK bestselling author Paul Weatherhead, we uncover the fascinating true stories behind his book "Phantoms of Christmas Past," revealing how seasonal ghost pranks in the 19th and early 20th centuries escalated into community-wide panics and vigilante ghost hunts.

The dark side of Christmas past emerges as Paul recounts the tragic Hammersmith ghost incident of 1803, where an innocent plasterer wearing traditional white work clothes was fatally shot by a vigilante who mistook him for a ghost. This sobering tale exemplifies how seemingly harmless pranks could spiral into violence when fear gripped communities. From simple sheet-wearing specters to elaborate apparitions adorned with luminous paint, devil masks, and metal claws, these ghost hoaxers left an indelible mark on history.

Discover the raucous Islington Graveyard Riot where hundreds of drunken revelers overran a cemetery after pub closing time, creating what Paul describes as a "spontaneous supernatural party" that police struggled to control. Marvel at the decades-long East Barnet ghost hunts that drew thousands in search of Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville's clanking ghost, complete with a fabricated romantic subplot involving a beautiful "Grey Lady" with dimpled cheeks. Paul explains how newspapers played a crucial role in spreading these stories, sometimes deliberately publishing fictional ghost accounts simply to fill column space during the Christmas season. Whether you're a paranormal enthusiast or history buff, these forgotten tales of mass hysteria reveal fascinating insights into our enduring fascination with the supernatural during the festive period.

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Hi everyone, I'm Stan Mallow, welcome to Paranormal Yakker. My guest on today's show is UK best-selling author Paul Weatherhead. We'll be discussing his book,

Phantoms of Christmas Past:

Festive Ghost Hoaxes, Ghost Hunts and Ghost Panics. Paul Weatherhead, welcome to Paranormal Yakker. Thanks for having me Stan. Phantoms of Christmas Past contains true stories of seasonal ghost hoaxes and strange phantom panics from the 19th and early 20th centuries. What Paul was there about the subject matter that initially got you interested in wanting to write a book about it? Well, I guess like a lot of people my age who were born in England, we sort of grew up with things like Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious Worlds and the Unexplain magazine. So I'd always been fascinated with the paranormal and those kind of things. But when I was researching my previous book about social panics, you know, when communities get gripped by a fear of an imaginary assailant, it led me down this little rabbit hole when I discovered that throughout Britain and lots of other countries as well, there were these strange little ghost hoaxes where it would suddenly blow up into a huge panic. And they haven't really been studied very much at all. There's been very little academic writing about them and no popular writing about them. So I was really interested to see how these stories develop, but also how the stories involved hoaxes, but often the hoaxes are linked to places that has folklore or ghost lore. So it sort of combines together people's fascination with ghosts, as well as people's sense of mischief and the strange way that people can be gripped, communities can be gripped by a panic. The hoaxes you write about frequently led to impromptu ghost hunts by hundreds, sometimes thousands of often drunk vigilantes and hysterical panics as rumors of the supposed ghosts would spread around the community. And regretfully, some became violent. A perfect example of that would be the Hammersmith Ghost incident, where an innocent man was shot dead because he was mistaken for a ghost due to his wearing the traditional white clothes of a bricklayer. Could you, Paul, expand on the Hammersmith ghost tragedy? Yeah, so this occurred in, towards the end of 1803 and the beginning of 1804. And for people who know London, Hammersmith now is part of North London, but a hundred years ago, this was a fairly, a semi-rural area. It was surrounded by orchards and London was growing and the metropolis was expanding. And, you know, within a few decades, it would gobble up the Hammersmith area. But at this time, it was quiet country lanes. And rumors started to emerge of a ghost. People had seen a strange white figure in church yards or in country lanes. And the suspicion was that it was someone with a gut, with a white sheet over their head, trying to prank people. Because remember, this was really common in the 19th and early 20th century. And as they spread the stories of this ghost prankster spread, the sightings became more and more strange. There was one coach driver who stopped his coach outside a field one moonlit night near Christmas, 1803. And he saw this weird white figure in the field and that he could hear this strange rattling noise. And this white figure was covered from head to foot in pigs' bladders filled with these dried peas that were making this noise. Pigs' bladders filled with dried peas. It's funny to think of it now. That was a common children's toy at the time. But, you know, he ran for his life. But there were loads of similar ghost appearances around the same time. Mostly they were people with a sheet over their head. Occasionally they might be described as having glowing eyes or having a claw on their hand. But, it became so bad that there were patrols of angry young vigilanties walking around the street trying to catch the ghost. And one of those was a man called Francis Young and he decided to take the law in his own hand. And he waited on a quiet country lane with a gun in his hand until he saw what he thought was the ghost, the ghost hoax. So it was a figure in white. And, he challenged it. And when he didn't reply, he pulled out his gun and shot it. And it turns out the guy who he shot was a young plasterer or builder called Thomas Millwood. He was wearing the traditional costume of builders at the time, which was all in white. Now, this young man was killed and it caused an uproar. And so there's a great deal of fascination. And, people were afraid to go out. But once this has happened, this tragedy happened, it seemed to puncture the bubble. And a few days later, a guy called John Graham, who was a shoemaker, was actually arrested and charged with being the ghost. And he said that he'd put a white sheet over his head to scare his apprentice because his apprentice had been telling his children these ghost stories and they were too scared to sleep. Now, this guy, John Graham, he may have put the sheet over his head once, but he wasn't the Hammersmith ghost. Because what happens in these strange ghost panics is one person or two people maybe pretend to be a ghost. And this leads to rumours spreading. And then you get copycat hoaxes who join in on it. And then you get copycat victims, victims who pretend they've seen the ghost. And so it all just escalates really quickly until suddenly the bubble bursts, as in the case with the Hammersmith ghost, with the death of an innocent man, and the conviction of a scapegoat. While many people who dressed as ghosts did, as you just mentioned, so did so wearing a simple white sheet, others were more elaborate in how they dressed. Can you describe some of those elaborate costumes? I mean, if you think about putting a white sheet over your head, imagine you're walking down the streets at night and you see someone with a white sheet over your head, you're going to know that this isn't a real ghost. It's some guy with a sheet over his head. But it's a very strange behaviour. And you're going to be you're going to be disturbed if you see someone who's there deliberately, deliberately trying to scare you. So even at its most basic, it would have been really unnerving to people who who met it. But the more elaborate costumes, luminous paint was easily available. So people would cover their costumes in luminous paint, so they would glow eerily in the dark. They'd wear colourful costumes. The reports that some of them were fire breathing, though whether that's true or made up is hard to tell because although of course, fire breathing is possible if you're a circus artist, doing it outside in unpredictable weather is something else. But some of these ghosts were described as having devil masks, horns, wearing animal skins, having metal claws or hooks on their hands. So there's quite a wide variety from your very simple sheet over the head to much more elaborate, luminous and unearthly looking fake ghosts. Sometimes the ghost hunting vigilantes would dress in drag. What were their reasons for doing that? It's funny to imagine, but quite often the idea was that these ghosts, the press called it playing the ghost, you know, dressing up as a ghost and then hanging around in a scary place to try and frighten someone. They thought that mainly the victims would be women, and so what the vigilantes did, they would often dress as women, walk around the street hoping that the ghost would jump out and try and scare them, and then they'd be able to turn the tables on the ghost. But if you can imagine what it would be like, you know, these burly young farmers dressed as women, it's going to be more like a stag party or something like that rather than a real serious ghost hunt or ghost investigation. It would have been, especially around Christmas time, they would have been drunk, they would have been high spirits, they would have been really excited and joking with each other. So it was almost like an impromptu party and many of these ghost hunts became this kind of strange flash mob, this kind of impromptu supernatural party. The Islington Graveyard Riot of 1899 led to what has been referred to as a vulgar riot, one that the police could barely control. How, Paul, did that riot come about and what events ensued at it that warranted it to be labeled vulgar? The Islington Churchyard Riot from 1899 that you discussed there, it all started when a guy called James Chant wrote a letter to a local newspaper saying that he'd seen a ghost in the churchyard, Islington Churchyard. This is part of London on Christmas Day, this was 1899, and he said he was going to go there again the following evening to look for this ghost. And so the following day crowds and crowds of people descended on this graveyard hoping to see the ghost, but you can imagine that the vast majority of these crowds came after they'd been to the pub. So closing time at the pub, everyone piles down to the graveyard and then they're all sort of running around the graves, hiding, jumping out and scaring each other, chasing each other, making these ghostly noises. There were hundreds of people squeezed into this really small area. The police were called but they really couldn't control it because as soon as people saw this crowd with police trying to keep people out, that meant there must be something worth seeing so they were more and more people kept coming in. So the crowd was unruly, it was drunken, there were reports that a few people lost their watches or wallets or jewellery and there were scuffles as well. So that's part of what led to it being called a vulgar riot. But there was a suspicion that because the guy who wrote the letter couldn't be traced, there was no trace of him at his address. And so there was a suspicion that the ghost hoax was started by pickpockets, hoping to get crowds, hundreds of drunk people in a small area together so they could easily move among them in the darkness and pick their pockets. So and that was something that the police entertained as being one possible reason for this hoax. But it wasn't just this hoax in Islington, this cemetery ghost riots were fairly common. There was another one in Hackney about five years before where this was in the summer rather than winter but in this case someone claimed to have seen a white figure in the churchyard but this time there were maybe because it was summer and the weather was better. There were thousands of people crammed into this cemetery all sort of having this riotous, raucous, ghostly party with a backdrop of a thunderstorm, thunder and lightning at the backdrop. So it was a really interesting and eerie spectacle but again the press hated these, they were really dismissive, they thought people were sort of being idiotic and superstitious and I don't think the press at the time understood it but because I think these things are better understood as a kind of spontaneous party, a spontaneous outburst of energy and interest in the supernatural but also drunken mischief. Thousands of ghost hunters invaded an area of North London called East Barnet every Christmas starting in 1926 and continued for at least three decades. Who Paul was the ghost they were hunting? Yeah, because like a lot of these panics, there's a folkloric element that helps to kickstart the ghost rumours. And in this case, the ghost of East Barnet was someone called Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville, and he was a medieval baron. He rebelled against King Stephen and was killed in a battle in 1144. And rumours spread around this area that, you know, you'd hear him, his armour clanking as he walked around the streets. So there were alleged, there was a legend of a ghost at this time. But I think the thing that really kickstarted the East Barnet ghost panic was a night watchman who was guarding some building materials. And he claimed that suddenly this ghost appeared. And it was quite a strange ghost because it was dressed in a red cavalry cloak and military gear, but he was a complete skeleton. So it was a sort of a skeletal ghost, but with this medieval kind of armour. Now, this led to all sorts of consequences, because the first thing that happened was that the local council had this really bizarre debate over whether a night watchman should be paid extra for guarding haunted locations. But once this appeared in the press, and this was just before Christmas 1926, crowds of people started coming to the area, looking for the ghost. Now, this included serious psychic investigators. It included mediums and spiritualists, but they were by far the minority. The majority were people who'd come straight from the pub, who were out for a good time, who were out for a laugh. And so every year, this began to get bigger and bigger. And I mean, interestingly, one nice little touch about the story of Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville, the clanking ghost of East Barnet, as he was called, was that by New Year's Eve 1926, the newspapers started to talk about him having a girlfriend. There was another ghost in the area called a Grey Lady, and they started to speculate about some kind of ghostly romance between the Grey Lady and Sir Geoffrey de Mandeville. And what happened was that the ghost of the Grey Lady was supposed to be really beautiful, with really attractive dimples in her cheeks. And so men came from all over England just to try and witness this ghostly figure with the beautiful dimples. And so, there was layer after layer kept being added to the story. And that was 1926. By the time you got to the early 30s, there were thousands of people coming on to this small part of London every Christmas. So the roads were blocked. There were film cameras and bright lights everywhere. And the serious psychic investigators were really annoyed because they couldn't do anything because there were crowds of drunk people everywhere having fun. And so it led to a little bit of conflict between the serious psychic investigators and, you know, the hundreds, the thousands of people who came just hoping for a bit of a laugh and maybe to see a ghost. So it increased year on year and probably 1945 was the last main year where there was a serious crowd. And after that, it seemed to dissipate, as did the sort of phenomenon of this sort of ghost panic. During the Christmas of 1900, a ghost known as the Lochee ghost caused a great deal of panic in the Irish community of Dundee. Could you elaborate on that event? Yes, so, Lochee, which now it's just part of modern Dundee, then it was a small town, 1900, and in the few years prior its population had quadrupled with Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine, so it was known in the area as Little Tipperary. Now reports emerged that a ghost was roaming the streets, the ghost was often described as having a flaming hat, some kind of luminous hat or a flaming hat, some said he had claws on his hands, and anyway this ghost caused such alarm that the people of the community formed into gangs, wandered the streets trying to catch the ghost. Occasionally they'd give chase to someone who was dressed as a ghost or who they thought was dressed as a ghost. They could never catch him, and there were lots of cases of mistaken identity. There was even a concern that young courting couples couldn't meet up because people were scared to go out and that had led to a drop in the marriage rates, so it was a very strange case. The people call this ghost, interestingly enough, Springheeled Jack, and I guess many of your audience will be aware of Springheeled Jack as the demonic figure that was said to haunt London in the late 19th century, and this had become a kind of generic name for any ghostly hoax at the time. But the Lochee ghost spread rapidly, a couple of people were badly beaten because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and people assumed that they were the ghost. When on New Year's Eve in 1921, a farmer claimed to have seen the ghost of King Richard III on his property, word of it quickly spread and that led to the farm being inundated by journalists, ghost hunters and psychic investigators. What were the findings of the journalists and ghost hunters who investigated it? Yes, again, like we said, often these ghost episodes have an element of folklore in them and with King Richard III, he died in battle at this place called Ambion Hill, which is in Leicestershire. And there hadn't really been many stories of ghosts haunting that area, but one New Year's Eve in the twenties, a local newspaper, the Nuneaton Chronicle, ran this article that said an old farmer was walking home from the pub on New Year's Eve and he walked through this woods on Ambion Hill and he saw this strange eerie glowing light and when he approached, he could see this kingly figure with a crown with a plum velvet cloak and a really ugly hideous face and the ghost supposedly spoke to him and he described the ghost as having a voice like a key in a rusty lock and the ghost said that every year he comes, it was the ghost of King Richard III and every year he comes to walk Ambion Hill, the site of his last battle. O n this occasion, he said he had a message for the world and the message was that woodcutters were chopping down trees on Ambion Hill and he told them to staid their hand, to cease and desist chopping down trees, so it was this article that started the, I don't know what you'd call it, the interest in it, but interestingly the original article is very tongue in cheek and if you read it you can tell that it's meant as a joke, but what happened was that it was summarised and syndicated in newspapers all over the country and they left out the tongue in cheek bits and just said the ghost of King Richard surrounded by a green haze is haunting Ambion Hill and so suddenly now you've got ghost hunters, you've got locals coming down looking to see the ghost, it was fairly clear that it'd been invented by the newspaper editor and this wasn't uncommon at the time. You'd find newspaper editors round about Christmas time thinking how can we fill a few common inches, we'll make up a ghost story and publish it and if another newspaper takes it up and it spreads well so much the better for us. Do you, Paul, have any theories as to why these ghost hunts, hoaxes, and panics happen so often at Christmas? I've thought about this quite a lot. It's a difficult question. It's not clear why, because these panics certainly happened all the year through, from early 19th century to the early 20th century. But they do seem to be concentrated around the Christmas period. And one idea that I have is that it's much easier to pretend to be a ghost and escape if it's dark. And so that means that they tend to start round about Halloween, grow through November, and then peak in December. And one reason maybe why they peak in December is that's when newspapers are looking for ideas to fill up their column and a Christmas ghost story is perfect for that. So that's another reason that, you know, maybe the newspapers are more likely to print them and that helps them to spread at Christmas. But I think another thing is they sort of, everyone loves a Christmas ghost story. People are fascinated by ghosts and the supernatural. And so, and Christmas is that time and Halloween as well. So I think that period between Christmas and Halloween, I think those are central elements that make it an ideal time for these ghost hoaxes to get up to their mischief. It didn't always end well. I'm not saying it's a good idea to do this because quite often if a ghost hoax was caught, he'd be badly beaten. He might be dumped in the nearest sewer or thrown down a well. So it's not, you had to be pretty fleet of foot if this was a pastime that you were going to attempt. Should viewers of Paranal Yakker want to buy Festive Ghost Hoaxes, Ghost Hunts and Ghost Panics, how, Paul, can they do that? It's available wherever you get your books from. It's published by 6th Books but it's certainly available in the US and the UK. You can certainly order it in a bookshop or you can buy it online. It'll be available from the publisher 6th Books but it's also on wherever you get your books from. It's a bit early for Christmas now but never too early to buy a present. Paul Weatherhead, I thank you for being my guest on Paranormal Yakker. Yakking with you has been a most enjoyable experience. Thank you Stan, I enjoyed it.