Many years ago, local people believed The Old Rectory (home of Rectoryreserve) was haunted. The Parsonage was located next to the church. When it was demolished a human skull was found among the debris. The vicar buried it in the churchyard.
The next morning it was again discovered among the rubble. Again it was reburied in the churchyard.
When the skull was again found in the debris it was decided to take it to the site of the 'new' Rectory where it was built into one of the chimneys.
Once occupied, residents often heard noises from the kitchen which sounded like crockery being smashed. Yet when morning came, everything was as normal. Servants would wake to find their blankets had mysteriously been removed! A particular passage was even declared the ghost's favourite haunt... no-one dared enter after dark.
Unable to cope with the strange 'goings-on' many servants left.
In 1854 Rev. Jackson almost rebuilt the Rectory; the chimney with the skull enclosed in it was sealed up and the passageways re-arranged. It is said the strange happenings ceased after that.
Every now and then, however, something odd does happen. A cleaner swore she heard footsteps above the kitchen one day when nobody was in the house. Our now departed old black dog one day suddenly started up and stared at the back corridor upstairs and began to growl and bark - yet nobody was there. A family member staying with us felt a dog lick her hand in the middle of the night - but there was no dog there when she switched on the light!
So maybe we were less surprised than some when, earlier this week, we were awoken in the early hours of the morning by the sound of strangers talking and music playing downstairs. But there was nobody else in the house! The resident Ghostbuster slid quietly out of bed and crept somewhat hesitantly down the stairs. The voices seemed to be coming from the 'snug'.
As I got closer, a strange rythmic thumping sound could be heard emanating from behind the door. I continued gingerly onwards - curious and just a little bit nervous.
I peered around the door ..... and there I saw the strangers ..... on TV! The thumping sounds soon identified their source .... Gunner's tail as he lay watching the screen.... If I hadn't been laughing with relief I could have strangled the little rotter! The mystery of how the TV came to be on took a little longer to solve. Was it the ghost? The same one maybe that had 'opened' the DVD player a few nights earlier? Or the one that had broken my reading specs. and left them lying on the kitchen floor when I was out of the house? Along with a page torn out of the current Sunday Times Culture section (the one with the TV programmes).
As I looked around the room for evidence - or inspiration - my eye was caught by something lying by the fireplace. The remote control! Closer inspection showed definite teeth marks. Now, everyone knows a ghost wouldn't waste time using his/her teeth to operate the remote control! The culprit could only have been Gunner.
P.R. Moxon in 'Training the Roughshooter's Gundog' emphasises that the dog must only be reprimanded for its misdemeanours at the time and point of the misdemeanour. Clearly I had missed both and could only admire his intelligence, not to mention oral dexterity, in identifying which two buttons had to be pressed simultaneously in order to switch on the TV.
Ghosts indeed!
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