Post by Graveyardbride on Sept 1, 2021 17:14:06 GMT -5
September’s Ghosts
When September arrives, even the most ardent lover of warm summer days at the beach, picnics under shady trees and nights around campfires, has to admit winter is just around the corner. Another few days, and it will be the first day of fall, a time of turning leaves, chrysanthemums and ripening pumpkins, precursors to Halloween, when the veil between life and death is at its thinnest and those long dead walk the earth once again. But not all ghosts wait until Halloween to appear and an appreciable number have chosen the month of September during which to manifest.
United States and Canada
Sept. 3: While some would say the exterior is nothing special, when it was constructed in 1846, Oregon City’s Dr. John McLouglin House (above), with its hipped roof, flanking interior end-wall chimneys, clapboard siding and asymmetrical double-hung windows, was one of the grandest and most elaborate homes in the state. From all accounts, McLoughlin, known as the “Father of Oregon,” and his extended family lived happily in the dwelling until his death at the age of 73 on September 3, 1857. Since that time, according to servants and family members, every year on the anniversary of his demise, Dr. McLoughlin makes his presence known by briefly manifesting in his upstairs bedroom around 9:45 a.m.
Sept. 21: Lovis Beach, aka Screeching Lady Beach, is a small vacant area adjacent to the Barnacle Restaurant at 140 Front Street in Marblehead, Massachusetts. According to legend, a ship laden with treasure was overtaken by pirates near Marblehead and the cutthroats slaughtered everyone on board, with the exception of a beautiful, bejeweled lady in a silk gown. They stripped her of her necklaces and bracelets, but were unable to remove the rings from her fingers.
As the vessel veered close to shore, the terrified woman jumped overboard and managed to make her way to Lovis Beach, where she collapsed, so out of breath she was unable to stagger to one of the small houses just yards away. The pirates soon found her and systematically cut off each of the lady’s fingers on which there was a ring, as she screamed, “Oh, mercy! Mercy! Lord Jesus Christ, save me!” The brutes paid her cries no heed and whatever else they may have done to the lady was not recorded.
An elderly woman living nearby heard the screeches in the night, but assumed they were the shrieks of some animal. William Tudor recorded the incident in his 1821 book, Miscellanies. “Her body was buried where the crime was perpetrated,” he wrote, “and to this day these screams are occasionally repeated; sometimes every year, sometimes an interval of two or three years will intervene. When these screams have been heard, it is always in a sound so superhuman, and superlatively dreadful, that the horror is indescribable.”
Full Moon: Pirates often paddled up rivers and other estuaries to bury their treasure and according to a long-forgotten tale in Catonsville, Maryland, on the night of the September full moon (September 29 this year), the ghost of a pirate strolls along the Patapsco River before vanishing in a ball of fire. According to the legend, he is the guardian spirit of a chest full of gold and jewels buried in the area many years ago.
Near Autumnal Equinox: On foggy evenings near the autumnal equinox, people in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island looking out onto Canada’s Northumberland Strait occasionally see a three- or four-masted schooner ablaze in the distance. The vessel is always sailing north at an impossible speed and usually disappears within seconds. A typical sighting was recounted by Sterling Ramsay in Folklore: Prince Edward Island:
“Late one evening, approaching dusk, a ship [was] sighted in the harbor which appeared to be in peril. ... Some distance out in the channel was what appeared to be a large three-masted sailing vessel ablaze from bow to stem. A group of men boarded a small boat and rowed toward the flaming ship, in hopes of rescuing as many of her crew as possible. While they were still some distance from the craft, it disappeared into the mist and appeared to vanish completely.”
Tales of the ghost ship have been around for years, with one of the earliest written accounts appearing in the 1905 Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick, wherein William Francis Ganong, wrote: “In its usual form, the light is roughly hemispherical. It has its flat side to the water and at times it simply glows without much change of form, but at other times it rises into slender moving columns, giving rise to an appearance capable of interpretation as the flaming rigging of a ship ....”
While the phantom ship is normally at such a distance and moving so quickly it is difficult to discern much about it, there have been a few reports of witnesses claiming to have seen men running about on deck.
England, Scotland and Wales
Because recorded history in Europe goes back much farther than it does in America, it stands to reason England, Scotland and Wales would have more ghosts, including those that appear on specific dates. Following is a list of 12 such anniversary spirits:
Sept. 3: On September 3, 1658, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, died of kidney disease and complications of malaria at the age of 59. On that same night, a great storm caused extensive damage throughout southern England, ripping humongous trees from the earth and causing significant destruction in Herefordshire’s Brampton Bryan Park, which had already been despoiled during the English Civil War (Aug. 22, 1642 - Sept. 3, 1651).
Cromwell’s son, Richard, served as Lord Protector for a scant nine months before resigning in May 1660, after which the monarchy returned to power. Not content with assuming his rightful position, Charles ordered the exhumation and “execution” of Oliver Cromwell’s body. Accordingly, on January 30, 1661, the anniversary of the beheading of Charles I, Cromwell’s corpse was torn from his grave at Westminster Abbey and executed, after which his head was removed and secured atop a pike, where it remained until a storm broke the pole in 1885.
When Cromwell died, some were certain it was the devil himself who raised hell in Brampton Bryan Park as he was collecting Cromwell’s soul, and that every September 3rd since, Old Nick celebrates by returning to the park, where he snatched one of hell’s most prominent residents.
Sept. 8: Around 5:30 on the morning of September 8, 1888, Annie Chapman, a woman described after death as undernourished, suffering from a chronic disease of the lungs, and possibly brain-damaged by syphilis, was slaughtered by Jack the Ripper at what was at the time 29 Hanbury Street. Today, there is a parking garage at the site, but for many years, there have been reports of a “short and stout” woman in long, voluminous skirts who disappears into thin air and some surmise this is the apparition of Annie Chapman returning to the site where she died more than a century ago.
Sept. 12: Baldoon Castle (above), located at Bladnoch in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, was the inspiration for Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel, The Bride of Lammermoor, a dark tale of love and revenge. In the mid-17th century, the stronghold was the home of Sir David Dunbar, who had arranged for his son, also called David, to marry Janet, eldest daughter of Sir James Dalrymple, another local landowner. Unfortunately, as was often the case in arranged marriages, the young woman loved another. Nevertheless, the dutiful lass acquiesced to her father’s wishes and on the day of her wedding, when her two brothers accompanied her to the church, they noted that even though it was an exceptionally warm summer day, their sister’s hands were cold as ice.
Apparently, the wedding proceeded without incident, but that night, when her bridegroom approached Janet’s bed, the overwrought young woman greeted him with a knife with which she stabbed him several times. Dunbar survived, but it was apparent the bride had lost her sense of reason and the lady remained locked within the bridal chamber until her death on September 12, 1669.
Although Baldoon Castle has been reduced to an ivy-covered pile of stones, local legend has it that in the early morning hours of every September 12, Janet Dalrymple, in a wedding gown streaked red with blood, walks among the ruins.
Archibald, 3rd Lord Rutherfurd, the man Janet loved, never married, living alone and in poverty until his death in 1685.
Sept. 13: Because of its geographical position, Newark Castle in the Scottish Borders became a hot spot of contention between the Royalists (“Cavaliers”) and Parliamentarians (“Roundheads”) during the aforementioned English Civil War. The war had been raging three years when, on September 13, 1645, a hundred Royalist followers of the Marquis of Montrose were shot following the Battle of Philiphaugh. But the Roundheads didn’t stop there, they went on to slaughter 300 women and children who had taken refuge in the Tower (above). It is said that ever since, on the 13th of September, the cries of the doomed innocents emanate from the lonely and deserted Tower.
Sept. 21: Isabella, who became known as the “She-Wolf of France,” married King Edward II (Edward of Caernarvon) of England in 1308 when she was 12 and he 23. Even though the king had a penchant for young men, he and his child bride seem to have been genuinely fond of each other. On one trip to France, Edward saved the queen’s life when a fire broke out one night and he scooped her up and rushed out into the street carrying his wife.
The queen apparently turned a blind eye to her husband’s homosexual dalliances until he became infatuated with Hugh Despenser the Younger, who was appointed the king’s chamberlain (bedroom attendant) in 1318. Dispenser apparently set out to seduce Edward and reduce Isabella’s influence and when England went to war with the queen’s brother, Charles IV of France, in 1324, the queen was livid. The following year, Edward sent his wife to France to negotiate a peace settlement, which she accomplished. But by this time, Isabella, who was around 28-years-old and the mother of four children, would brook no disrespect and rebelled against both Despenser and her husband’s avaricious and despotic rule. The insulted queen began an adulterous affair with Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, and with the assistance of Count William of Hainault – whose daughter was betrothed to Isabella’s son, Prince Edward, heir to the throne – formed an army and forced her husband to step down in favor of 14-year-old Edward III.
According to legend, Edward II* was ultimately imprisoned at Berkeley Castle (above) in Gloucestershire, where he was confined to a dungeon into which filth and rotting animal carcasses were thrown in the hope he would contract some disease and die. Unfortunately for the former king, he survived and on September 21, 1327, two men seized the deposed monarch and pinned him face-down upon his bed after which “a kind of horn or funnel was thrust into his fundament through which a red-hot spit was run up his bowels.” Such was the king’s pain that his agonizing screams reverberated throughout the castle and if the stories are true, every September 21st since, the bloodcurdling cries of Edward II emanate across the green Gloucestershire countryside from the 12th-century stronghold.
The queen apparently turned a blind eye to her husband’s homosexual dalliances until he became infatuated with Hugh Despenser the Younger, who was appointed the king’s chamberlain (bedroom attendant) in 1318. Dispenser apparently set out to seduce Edward and reduce Isabella’s influence and when England went to war with the queen’s brother, Charles IV of France, in 1324, the queen was livid. The following year, Edward sent his wife to France to negotiate a peace settlement, which she accomplished. But by this time, Isabella, who was around 28-years-old and the mother of four children, would brook no disrespect and rebelled against both Despenser and her husband’s avaricious and despotic rule. The insulted queen began an adulterous affair with Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, and with the assistance of Count William of Hainault – whose daughter was betrothed to Isabella’s son, Prince Edward, heir to the throne – formed an army and forced her husband to step down in favor of 14-year-old Edward III.
According to legend, Edward II* was ultimately imprisoned at Berkeley Castle (above) in Gloucestershire, where he was confined to a dungeon into which filth and rotting animal carcasses were thrown in the hope he would contract some disease and die. Unfortunately for the former king, he survived and on September 21, 1327, two men seized the deposed monarch and pinned him face-down upon his bed after which “a kind of horn or funnel was thrust into his fundament through which a red-hot spit was run up his bowels.” Such was the king’s pain that his agonizing screams reverberated throughout the castle and if the stories are true, every September 21st since, the bloodcurdling cries of Edward II emanate across the green Gloucestershire countryside from the 12th-century stronghold.
Sept. 23: Lady Margaret Godolphin, 26, wife of the Earl of Godolphin, died in childbirth on September 9, 1678. However, before she passed, the young mother begged to be taken to her husband’s home in Penzance, Cornwall, for burial, even though she had never been there. Her wish was granted and since that time, the path from Godolphin House to the old chapel has been known as the “Ghost Path,” for every September 23rd, a phantom funeral cortège, bearing Lady Margaret’s coffin, slowly makes its way to her final resting place in St. Breaca Churchyard. Of note, the brass plaque marking Lady Margaret’s displays the engraving of a pentagram.
Sept. 23: Also on September 23, spectral Roman soldiers have been seen patrolling the causeway leading to Mersea Island on the coast of Essex. Not long ago, a taxi driver picked up a fare at the Peldon Rose Inn on the night of September 23rd and what appeared to be a Roman soldier suddenly materialized in the highway in front of his car. Unable to stop, he reportedly drove straight through the man. Of interest, Romano-British lead coffins and glass bowls containing human ashes have been unearthed in the area.
Sept. 28: Sherborne Castle (above) in Dorset was built by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1594 and every year on St. Michael’s Eve (September 28) Sir Walter briefly appears in what has come to be known as “Raleigh’s Seat.” Raleigh had the stone seat created on the side of the wall beside the road so that he could sit comfortably in his garden while keeping an eye on passing traffic.
Sir Walter, a celebrated soldier responsible for the first English colonies in the New World, also was a poet and favorite at the court of Elizabeth I. It was Raleigh who allegedly spread his cloak in a puddle so that his monarch could pass without getting her feet wet. Then in 1592, at the age of 54, he married Elizabeth “Bess” Throckmorton, one of the queen’s ladies in waiting, who was already pregnant. The enraged monarch immediately dismissed the woman and had both Bess and Raleigh imprisoned in the Tower of London for plotting behind her back. Fortunately, Queen Elizabeth’s anger was short-lived, the two were soon released and within a few years, Raleigh was again in favor.
Unfortunately, King James I wasn’t as fond of Raleigh and after being convicted of treason and sentenced to death in a sham trial, Sir Walter was relegated a second time to the Tower, where he remained incarcerated for 13 years. Finally, in 1617, he was pardoned to sail to Guyana in search of El Dorado, but during the expedition, his men – against Raleigh’s orders – attacked a Spanish outpost. Upon his return to England, James I had Sir Walter arrested, reinstated his death sentence and he was beheaded on October 29, 1618.
There also are rumors that Sherburne Castle is cursed because of the ill fortune that befell several subsequent owners.
Month of September: Four other locations have ghosts that manifest during the month of September: A lady in black returns to haunt Manorbrier Castle in Pembroke, Wales, and a young soldier, killed for cheating at cards, is seen at the Grenadier Public House, 18 Wilton Row in London. A third apparition, that of Princess Anne, a pleasure boat rammed by a collier on September 3, 1878, appears on the River Thames at Thamesmead, Kent. In excess of 600 people died in the accident and as the doomed vessel materializes, the pitiful cries of the dying can be heard emanating from the unforgiving waters.
Another September haunting takes place at Sudeley Castle, located near the village of Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, where a Victorian era housekeeper in a high-collared black dress returns to check on the magnificent home she managed in life. This particular apparition also manifests during the month of August.
Sources: Britain’s Haunted Heritage and The Good Ghost Guide by J. A. Brooks; Gazetteer of Scottish and Irish Ghosts by Peter Underwood; Miscellanies by William Tudor; New England’s Ghostly Haunts by Robert Ellis Cahill; Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick; Todd Atteberry, The Witchery Arts; Folklore: Prince Edward Island by Sterling Ramsay; Richard Jones, Great Castles; Where the Ghosts Walk: The Gazeteer of Haunted Britain by Peter Underwood; Medieval Kings and Queens; Royal Museums Greenwich; English Monarchs; About Aberdeen; Visiting Sudeley Castle, Life Well Wandered; and Sky History.
*Some historians suggest Edward's death was staged and that he likely lived until 1330.
