CHARNEY HALL Halloween

Andrew Holmes-Higgin emailed me yesterday and reminded me that it is Halloween tomorrow…I don’t really have to say more…just tuck up in a warm bed, switch the lights out and keep the covers high over your head…Andrew swears that these tales are all true…

’Hey Keith - as the spooky season is once again upon us, I thought I’d pass along some rather strange memories of my Charney days on the subject of what to a 10-year-old was unbelievable terror.  I wish my supernatural stories were a little more horrific but we were probably all very impressionable in those days, and something pretty innocuous took on darker meanings after lights out…’

The Ghost.  My only real ghost story, and I remember it today just as if it happened yesterday.  It in the summer term of my first year (1968) and I was in what I think was Dorm 1 (middle floor, facing North).  At some point one night I woke up and was aware of a hazy light over by the door which moved into the room towards the window overlooking the Bay, then returned and stopped at the foot of my bed.  It definitely wasn't a person as although it was dark in the room, the shape had no discernable form and made no sound.  My head was already mostly under the covers from when it passed my bed the first time, and I was absolutely frozen still with fear as I knew that if I even moved or made a sound, SOMETHING bad would surely happen.  There was just enough of a gap between the sheet and the mattress for me to ever so slowly open one eye and peek out and I immediately regretted it.  The shape was now sitting on my bed, very close to my feet, and yet I had heard no sound and the bed hadn't moved.  I realized I had to eventually breathe and with a massive effort I very slowly exhaled as quietly as I could and breathed in, sure that the movement would tip off the visitor to my waking state.  It seemed like half an hour till I exhaled, and I ever so slowly breathed in as quietly over a very long period of time, and the passage of time lost all meaning and still the light remained at the foot of my bed, not moving  but very definitely there. 

Down in the town the chimes of the clock tower sounded out every quarter hour and still my visitor remained there, and I lay motionless in the position I was in when this first happened.  I don't know what I thought would happen if I suddenly sat up, or called out, and I don't remember how long this went on, but eventually somehow I fell asleep.   

The next morning I told everyone in the dorm what had happened and of course nobody believed me.  Someone said it was probably the matron doing her rounds but when I asked her she said she hadn't been in the room all night.

 

But a couple of nights later I had a dream which I also still remember in which I was walking impossibly slowly up the passageway from the stairs towards Dorm 1 and behind me was the sound of someone bouncing a big rubber medicine ball loud and heavily on the floor, following me from behind, and as I turned there was nothing there, but the bouncing sound continued, getting closer until I woke up in a panic….

 

Fangy Gorilla.  We were in Dorm Yellow (I think) which overlooked the lane outside Grove House.  And it was Halloween night and we were in bed after lights out, half-asleep.  Outside in the lane there was suddenly a loud grunting sound which got increasingly louder, with a few "Hey"s thrown in.  The lane outside was almost never used by people or vehicles after dark.  Something very odd was going on.  Someone got out of bed, peeked around the blind, and made some kind of exclamation which had the rest of us standing next to him in seconds, the blind pulled up as we stared down in astonishment.  Out there, in the lane, was unquestionably a very large gorilla doing some kind of dance in the gloom.  We banged on the window to get its attention and noticing us, it began to jump up and down, banging its chest, and shouting out in a rather thin and local boyish voice "Oi am Fangy Gorilla!"  And then he turned and loped away uphill to one of the local farms where likely he lived.  And that's my story - sorry it's not more dramatic.  But we were visited by a gorilla on Halloween…

                                

Podmore and His Smelly Hound.  Someone, possibly Mr McCulloch who on reflection probably originated a lot of the scary stories that were passed down from the boys of one year to the next, would tell of the ghost of old Mr Podmore and his "smelly hound".  Mr Podmore as we all know was the founder of the school and from the photos he appeared to be a very stern and upright Victorian educator and probably disciplinarian, and, as the story went, he used to prowl the hallways at night along with his dog, listening for boys who were foolishly talking after lights out.  Years after his death, the story went, on dark moonless nights, the ghost of Mr Podmore and his dog would return, gliding up and down the lino-covered hallways, ears to the door, listening.  What I never stopped to question, however, was what exactly the ghostly duo would DO if they caught someone in the act.  Burst in like Batman and Robin and do - what?  Report us?  We knew that some of the masters would on occasion keep an ear open for disruption in the dorms, but that was entirely different to the sulphurous smell of the hell-hound and the glowing demonic red eyes of Mr Podmore.  And of course the story is ridiculous on its face but late at night when I was the only one awake in the dorm and the moon was shining in on the floor, as my watch approached Midnight it was not completely impossible that if someone woke up and said something…….

 

The Monster Room in Dorm 2.  On the interior wall of Dorm 2 near the window was a wooden door that was locked.  Nobody knew what has behind it, and there was nothing on the outside wall at that same location, and the Matron said she didn't know what it was for, and didn’t have a key anyway.  One of our beds was very close to it, and it was either mine, or I was the next one over, and I never went to sleep facing that door.  We called it the "Monster Room" in daytime, but after dark we never referred to it at all, pretending it wasn't there, but the one thing was definitely there was a sense of menace about what was actually behind that door, and why it was kept locked for no apparent reason.  Occasionally late at night when it was quiet we heard noises behind it - very faint and random, but real, and something that in my mind was moving around with ill-intent.

 

Despite the fact that nobody ever disappeared overnight while in that dorm, and the door never actually burst open letting out demons and monsters and things from Dr Who, but that just added to the sense of dread knowing that some time something terrible HAD to happen, and the anticipation was terrible. Its presence outweighed everything in the room and it was a rather joyless and small dorm and I was enormously happy when after one term I was moved into another one.

 

I could ruin the story by saying that the following term someone found a key and opened it and there was just a small empty cupboard behind the door. But I won't.  Though the noises had been real - someone hid a stash of illicit biscuits in there later on, and the mice got them.

 

Okay not a ghost story but pretty weird anyway.  The story is told that Charlie and Herbert, our groundsmen & gardeners too were sitting in the cellar at Grove House on one occasion, during a thunderstorm, when there was an almighty CRASH and the coal-burning boiler, or whatever was down there that supposedly generated heat for the building, erupted and a brilliant white Thunderball blasted out of the hatch and floated around the room in eerie slow motion.  SO I AM TOLD.  I have no idea where this story came from, and if it really happened I can completely see both of them just sitting around and watching it while puffing on their Woodbines, then getting on with whatever they were doing, without saying anything.  Just another day at Charney Hall.  I seriously don't recall hearing either of them ever speaking a word, and I saw them a lot.

Though I do recall a LOT of lightning activity at Charney.  One summer in the middle of an especially heavy thunderstorm I decided to take my rather large steel watch off my wrist just in case, and when I dropped it on the table in Dorm 2 there was an almighty crash and flash INSIDE the room right where I put the watch down, and we all found ourselves downstairs shrieking all the way in pure panic.  There were green copper lightning rods at a couple of places on the ends of the main building, but this was around the side of the building, and the light was ABSOLUTELY in the room with us.  Charged particles, or something.  Freaked the hell out of us, and it absolutely happened.  I still have the watch, by the way, and it still keeps good time.

….and the ideal Halloween present for your favourite witch - a book mark…

….and a bottle of Inchiostro di Bruco…

Does anyone else have more CHARNEY creepy stories to tell? 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!