Throughout history witches, from the old English wicca for the masculine and wicce feminine, have been revered and feared. Wise women who were able to heal and accordingly appeared to have knowledge beyond the understanding of others were sometimes considered a threat as they were ‘different’ and possibly rebellious and needed to be castigated accordingly. This was especially true when Christianity began to spread its wings, as the power of these ‘witches’ seemed to emanate from somewhere other than God. Witches were sometimes assisted in their work by ‘familiars’ who were generally animals of some description and explains why witches are so often associated with cats who are themselves of course independently minded creatures!

Prince Rupert the royalist general who is not traditionally thought of as dabbling in the occult, had a large poodle named Boye, who would accompany him into battle. Boye was greatly feared by the parliamentarian army as he was credited with supernatural powers. If one were to conjure up the thought of the most evil dog imaginable, a poodle has to be the last one to spring to mind. However, when the war was over, Boye was shot apparently with a silver bullet.

Witch hunters employed several tests to discover witches. The suspects would be stripped, often in public as this provided entertainment for the masses, and checked over for birthmarks as these were considered to be the marks of the devil. They would be cut, as it was a well known fact that witches did not bleed, blunt knives were often used to prove their guilt. Another test was to tie the right thumb and toe together and then throw the victim in a pond or river. If they floated they were obviously rejecting the water of baptism and were accordingly guilty, if they sank however they were innocent. They might have been dead of course, but at least their soul would have gone to heaven happy in the knowledge of being guilt free.

Witch hunts first became prevalent in southern France and Switzerland during the 14th and 15th century, but probably the most famous was in Salem Massachusetts in 1692 where 150 people were arrested and tried for witchcraft. 29 were found guilty and 19 hanged. One man who refused to enter a plea, had a wooden board placed on top of him onto which stones were piled in an attempt to persuade him. He refused to answer and was crushed to death.

Although in the popular imagination burning was the best way to execute witches, in actual fact, more were hanged. Admitting guilt was the best way to avoid death, as it was then possible to obtain absolution via a trip to a convent or a monastery. Part of the deal was to name other witches who were themselves arrested and tried. After torture it’s no surprise that many confessed and named others simply to save themselves. Arthur Miller’s masterpiece The Crucible was based on the Salem witch trials and mirrored in so many ways the wicked events of the McCarthy hearings of 1954. Simply substitute the word communist for witch and you get an idea of how events were conducted.

In August 1605 King James 1st paid his first visit to Oxford and at St John’s College he was treated to a small play written in Latin by Mathew Gwinn a former fellow of the college. During the play he was greatly impressed when he was addressed by three witches. Some say that his enthusiasm for this performance encouraged Shakespeare to write Macbeth where the three witches of course have a pivotal role. James1st of England who was also James V1 of Scotland, had a great interest in witchcraft and attended the North Berwick Witch trials where Agnes Sampson was accused of using witchcraft to summon up storms against James’s ship. He is also known to have personally supervised the torture of witches.

A quick search on the internet throws up lots of intriguing tales of witches. As mentioned in my first blog, one of my favourites is Lady Tanfield an unpopular landlady from the 16th Century whose fiery chariot was seen to fly across the rooftops of Burford in her never ending quest to “grind the people of Burford to powder beneath her chariot’s wheels”. If that weren’t bad enough, her ghostly chariot was said to be accompanied by an ominous dark cloud. If this cloud were to envelope you, it was said that your mind would be sucked out and you would be rendered insane!

Those of you interested in hunting down some witches artefacts should pay a visit to the excellent Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Amongst their fascinating collection, you’ll find a witch’s ladder, a rope with feathers and the victims hair woven into it, which would be hidden under their bed and would apparently make them ill. A bottle that holds a trapped witch is also on view, could this be the same type of bottle that holds the spirit of Lady Tanfield herself, and is currently lodged under Burford Bridge?

Witches are an intriguing subject and in the old days were a handy scapegoat for Man’s misfortunes. We human beings like to have someone to blame when things go wrong, if there were no witches we would have needed to invent them. Nowadays we have other scapegoats, religion, politics, foreigners the list is endless!

The birth of Spiritualism podcast read by Bill

Is it possible to actually contact the dead and communicate with them? It’s not surprising that this question has intrigued man since the dawn of time. How many of us have wondered if there is a life beyond the grave, and if so, is it not possible that there could be some way of communicating between this world and the next? In this chaotic life we lead, could the spirit world guide us in some way?

It was in answer to these questions that spiritualism came into being in the 19^th century. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this was a time of many great scientific breakthroughs, and incredible inventions. One of the most impressive being, the wax cylinder, which enabled us for the very first time in the history of mankind, to record and playback the human voice. Imagine how it must have felt to hear a voice, when the person who created it, was no longer present…! The telephone was another miracle; we could at last converse with persons who were not in the same room, same house, same town, or even the same country. For the first time, we could talk to people on the far side of the World!  Even Queen Victoria loved the new technology and before the telephone became widespread, had her own telegraph room in Buckingham Palace to enable her to keep in touch with the colonies. With all these fantastic new ways of communicating, was it really so far fetched to consider the possibility of contacting those beyond the grave?

Spiritualism began in Western New York State. Social historians have noted that this area was known for its religious fervour, and became the spawning ground for many religious sects. Mainstream religions promised eternal life, but in an era of emerging science which demanded physical evidence, many religious persons wanted tangible evidence of the claims of religion, especially for those of an afterlife.

The first apparent proof of an afterlife appeared in Hydesville New York in 1848 in a modest clapperboard house which had the reputation for being haunted. The Fox family who lived there, had three teenage daughters who claimed to hear strange rapping noises at night. They thought a ghost might be responsible for these noises, so they tried to respond by clapping their hands. They soon developed a code for communicating with this ghost, whom they thought was a peddler murdered at the house. The discovery of a skeleton in their basement seemed to confirm this. The Fox sisters became immediate celebrities and they demonstrated their communication with this spirit by using taps and knocks, automatic writing, and later even voice communication when the spirit took control of one of the girls.

Soon others, now known as mediums, imitated this and began apparently communicating with the dead, and charging for their services. Séances were conducted in the dark and strange events would occur, cold breezes were felt, musical instruments played mysteriously on their own. The medium sometimes spoke under the control of the spirit, relaying messages from ‘the other side’, which would then appear mysteriously on sealed slates.

Sceptics suspected this was all a fraud, none the less, belief in the ability to communicate with the dead grew rapidly and soon became an organised religion.

Suspicions that the séance room phenomena were fraudulent were reinforced when Margaret Fox confessed on October 21^st 1888, that she had actually produced the spirit raps by, believe it or not, cracking her toe joints!

Margaret confessed that she and her sisters had used this, and other methods to produce the raps. Another trick they used was to bounce an apple on a piece of string hidden behind the furniture. This revelation from Margaret showed that the entire spiritualism movement was founded on fraudulent events. This confession outraged Spirtualists, but rather than accept the facts, they simply refused to believe her denial. Interestingly one of the most famous people to refute Margaret’s confession was the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Not only did he believe in spiritualism, but also in fairies. In 1917 two teenage girls Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, produced pictures of fairies they had photographed at the bottom of their garden. When we look at them today it’s easy for us to see them as fakes, but Conan Doyle not only accepted the photos as genuine, but wrote two pamphlets and a book in their defence. His book ‘The Coming of the Fairies’ is still in print today, and many people still believe the photos are genuine, despite the two girls admitting in 1982 that they had faked the photos. We’re all good at seeing what we believe, and not seeing things that challenge our beliefs.

Many people believed in spirit manifestations simply because they were endorsed by famous and intelligent personalities, one being Sir Oliver Lodge. In Sir Oliver’s capacity as a scientist, during a lecture at Oxford University in 1894, he transmitted a radio signal, one year before Marconi, he was also the inventor of an early form of spark plug. So he was obviously a man to be taken seriously.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was another great luminary to endorse mediums, but perhaps intelligent minds are the most easily deceived. Conan Doyle, for example pronounced the famous New York medium Nino Pecaro to be genuine, yet only a short time later, Pecaro publicly confessed himself to be a faker and a cheat, a trickster of the first rank. So you can see, these imposing testimonials from the good and great don’t necessarily mean a thing.

Having said that, there were, and are, mediums who may well be genuine. Despite numerous investigations, one of the most famous, Daniel Dunglas Home, could never be proved to be a fake. He conducted some incredible demonstrations, one of the most impressive being, on December 16th 1868 when he is said to have, floated horizontally out of a bedroom window, passing some seventy feet above the street below, and then re enter the apartment via a sitting-room window.

So it looks like we all need to make up our own mind about Spiritualism. Personally, I’m all for intrigue, and provided no one is exploited or hurt, I will always be fascinated by it. Wouldn’t life be boring if there were no mysteries or unanswered questions about life, and even more so, about death.

Blog read by Bill Spectre

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, how many of us can resist the allure of a ghost story? We’re all fascinated by the possibility of there being ‘something’ on the other side. It was on this basis that I set about researching the spookier side of Burford, and later Oxford, with a view to writing and performing an entertainment based ghost trail. As an ancient coaching town, Burford has gathered many chilling tales. Lawrence Tanfield was born in what is now The Bay Tree Hotel, and later he became the Chief Baron of the Exchequer. He and his wife became extremely unpopular due to their excessive greed and their contemptuous attitude toward their tenants. When Lawrence died, he had to be secretly buried at midnight to avoid rioting and his effigy was burnt on Burford High Street every midsummer’s day for two hundred years. When his wife finally died, celebrations were short lived when a fiery chariot was seen flying across the rooftops of Burford with the hated Lady Tanfield at the reins.  These sightings continued for two centuries and were so terrifying that a group of clergymen were called upon to rid the town of her evil presence. They trapped her spirit in a bottle which was flung off Burford Bridge and is supposedly now lodged under the third arch. If ever the cork in the bottle dries out, it is thought that Lady Tanfield’s spirit will be released and she will resume her ghostly chariot flights. If the Windrush looks like drying out, locals apparently water the third arch to ensure her spirit is never released!

The George Inn, now an Antiques Centre, was the favourite watering hole of Tom Dick and Harry Dunsden – possibly the original Tom Dick and Harry, but certainly three of the most notorious highwayman ever recorded in the Cotswolds. After a life of crime Dick died after his brothers were forced to cut off his arm to escape capture during a bungled burglary. Tom and Harry were later condemned to death after they’d killed an over inquisitive barman.  The judge ordered that after death they should be brought back to Cap’s Lodge Plain, where the murder had been committed and hung from a tree to act as a warning to any passing ‘would-be’ villains.  Their bodies were carted back from Gloucester, but the carter, who was understandably thirsty after his journey, decided to stop off at an Inn for a drink. Ironically he chose The George at Burford, the brothers had popped in for a final pint at their local. They are now said to haunt the Inn and strange bangings and scraping sounds are heard in the dead of night. A few years ago one of stallholders within the Antique’s Centre, quietly approached me and told me that on a previous night, she and her dog has been on their own locking up. Suddenly her dog started to growl and focus on one spot in the room. Slowly its head and eyes followed someone up the stairs, but The George was deserted – or was it……?

After the success of the Burford Trail I wanted to research Oxford.  I knew I would enjoy lifting the lid on this great seat of learning to see what might lie beneath. I was not to be disappointed. At Oxford Castle which has stood vigil over the city since 1071, I learnt of Mary Blandy who was hanged there in 1752 for poisoning her father. Mary now sometimes makes her invisible presence felt during my Oxford Ghost Trail.

A stroll from Oxford Castle brings us to Broad Street, – a brick cross in the road, marks where the three Oxford Martyrs, Nicholas Ridley, Thomas Cranmer and Hugh Latimer were burnt at the stake for daring to support the protestant church against the catholic Queen Mary Tudor. In 1995 a young girl saw the apparition of a man standing there in a ghostly pyre with a barrel around his neck; curiously this was how Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley had gone to their deaths. Nicholas Ridley’s brother had brought gunpowder in barrels, for the men to hang around their necks to make their deaths as swift as possible. Nobody had told this to the little girl, so she must have seen it with her own eyes.

In the 19^th Century by looking through the windows along Brasenose Lane, you might have witnessed the debauchery that was The Brasenose Hellfire Club. Here my intrepid ghost hunters attempt to conjure up the proof that the terrifying cloaked figure of the Devil himself was once seen here.

Although the ghost trail was conceived as a fun based street entertainment which does its best to engage the audience with illusions stories and laughs, I’m always amazed that so many seemingly supernatural events have been experienced by my audience members. Perhaps they know I will be open to their stories, but at least twenty percent of them have had some weird encounter to relate, be it smelling the distinctive pipe smoke of some long lost relative, having the sensation of someone sitting at the bottom of the bed or a sudden and inexplicable chill in a room. Can all these occurrences really be so easily dismissed as being ‘all in the mind?

A gentleman on my Oxford Ghost Trail told me he had recently moved to a remote house tucked away in some woods. He and his wife couldn’t understand why often at around 2.30 am they were awoken by a car horn. Late one night they were on their way back from holiday and were almost home when a woman stepped out into the road directly in front of them. He frantically sounded his horn and just missed the woman. He pulled over, but she seemed to have vanished into thin air, on looking at his watch he saw it was 2.30am. Could this perhaps explain the frantic sounding of horns at night?  Curious, I can’t resist a mystery.

If anyone has their own spooky experiences to tell, I’d love to hear about them and would very much like to use them in future blogs and podcasts. Please get in touch and tell me more………….!