The Ghost of Boothill Cemetery

The Ghost of Boothill Cemetery

"This is the photo that changed my opinion about ghost photos," says Terry Ike Clanton, who runs the TombstoneArizona.com website. Clanton is an actor, recording artist and cowboy poet, and is also a cousin of the legendary Clanton Gang who clashed with the Earps and Doc Holliday at the famous gunfight at OK Corral. Clanton took this photo of his friend at Boothill Graveyard. The photo was taken in black and white because he wanted Old West-looking pictures of himself dressed in Clanton's 1880-period clothes. Clanton took the film for developing to the local Thrifty Drug Store, and when he got it back was startled at what he saw. Among the gravestones, just to the right of his friend, is the image of what appears to be a thin man in a dark hat. By height, the man appears to be either legless, kneeling... or rising up out of the ground. "I know there was no other person in this photograph when I shot it," Clanton insists. And he believes the small figure in the background is holding a knife. "We thought this was a tie at first, but after further review, it appears to be a knife," Clanton says. "The knife is in a vertical position; the tip is located just below the figure's right collar. If you're not convinced that something is weird here, look at my friend's shadow in the photo. It appears to be going back slightly to the right of him. The figure in the back should have the same shadow, but it doesn't!"

BELL INN HOTEL Peterborough, England

The Bell Inn Hotel, historically an important stop on the Great North Road between London and York, is one of the finest surviving examples of a 17th century Coach House in the country. Renowned as the birthplace of Stilton Cheese and situated in the village of Stilton, The Bell Inn has stood on its present site since 1500, though earlier incarnations, (as long as 1437) have been recorded. Today's building dates from 1642, the date marked on the southern gable, and the year in which the Civil War began. It was originally built of oolitic limestone and slates of Colleyweston stone.
Records at Huntingdonshire show that Dick Turpin stayed at the Bell Inn for several days, shortly before his capture. Dick Turpin's spirit is believed to be one of the several ghosts that haunt the Bell Inn Hotel.
In 1962 a new landlord moved into the Bell Inn, after just several days he was complaining to locals of the atmosphere in one of the bedrooms. On one occasion in the bedroom, a fire that had been laid in the grate earlier that day suddenly burst into flames. The locals informed the landlord that the bedroom in question, was the one in which Dick Turpin is reputed to have slept in.
A year later in 1963 the landlord acquired a large dog which began howling soon after midnight and always on a Wednesday. It is said that Turpin's spirit at the Inn is more active on Wednesdays and that his spirits wanders the winding passages of the Inn.
Several guests over the years have reported seeing the apparition of a dark figure on horseback outside the Inn, other guests have reported been woken early in the morning to see a dark figure standing at the bottom of their bed. Several customers when settling the bill have asked after a woman dressed in period clothes whom they passed in the corridor and presumed worked for the Hotel.
Staff regularly report equipment being moved or disappearing from the bar area and kitchen only to reappear several days later. Staff also report the feeling of being watched and seeing shadowy figures in their peripheral vision.
Paranormal tours and ghost hunts are regularly held at the Bell Inn Hotel please contact the Hotel for further details.

The ghost of Anne Boleyn

The spirit of Henry VIII apparently sleeps peacefully. But the two wives he executed - Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard - still haunt the world they once lived in... This is the story of Anne Boleyn, who was believed to be guilty of treason, incest, adultery and... witchcraft!

Accused of treason, incest, adultery and... witchcraft!
As a young girl, Anne Boleyn was sent to the French court and exposed to the influence of an immoral society. While her sister Mary was the mistress of Henry VIII, Anne thought she could do better and become the wife of the King of England. For six years she played the "hard-to-get" game she learned in Paris, and when Catherine of Aragon failed to produce a male heir, both Anne and Henry felt she could be the next Queen of England...

It is a fact that Anne was an arrogant Queen, causing endless troubles by her jealousies and improprieties. But she did not deserve to be accused of the worst of crimes, such as treason, incest (with her brother George, Lord Rochford), adultery (with four other men) and witchcraft.

To marry Anne, Henry broke with Rome and brought Protestantism to England. Roman Catholic writers have never forgiven her and attributed unspeakable crimes to her. In 1536, bishop Fisher was beheaded for refusing to acknowledge Henry as head of the Church. It was said Anne had his severed head brought to her on a dish, so she could stick a silver bodkin through his tongue. There also were rumours that "the concubine" had tried to poison Queen Catherine and Princess Mary, and that she - as a witch - was devoted to the foullest diabolism.

The one and only true crime of Anne Boleyn was that she - as Catherine of Aragon - was not able to produce an all-important male heir. So, Henry turned from her in disgust, not suspecting that the despised daughter she gave birth to would become England's finest Queen, Elizabeth I...

In April 1536, five men were arrested as being Anne's lovers, including her brother. Before they were tortured, all men said Anne was innocent, but under torture the Flemish musician Mark Smeaton accused her of being unfaithful to the King.Anne was arrested and, together with her brother, taken to the Tower of London.

In his anxiety to rid himself of her, Henry said Anne had bewitched him. At that time, it was widely believed Anne possessed a third nipple and a sixth finger on her left hand, and that - as a child - she had a curious dislike of church-bells. This was an aversion common to witches. Now it was clear that Anne Boleyn had entered into a pact with the Devil and that the King had been a victim of her devilish sorcery...

The five men were executed on May 17 and two days later Anne was beheaded. She wore a gay robe of damask over an underskirt of red and upon her wonderful black hair she had a pearl-embroidered hood. As she stood there on the scaffold, her dark eyes shining, laughing in the face of death, she made a joke about her little neck and the skill of the executioner. Her bravery caused the Governor of the Tower to write that "this lady had much joy and pleasure in death".

Anne was beheaded in the Tower and buried there. Her scornful courage was open to various interpretations by the superstitious minds of the 16th century. Some thought that her bravery merely proved she was anxious to go to her true consort, the Prince of Darkness...

Oh Death, Let Pass My Very Guiltless Ghost
In the Tower of London, Anne penned this poem:

Oh Death
Rock me asleep
Bring on my quiet rest
Let pass my very guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast
Ring out the doleful knell
Let it sound
My death tell
For I must die.

But Death brought no quiet rest for the spirit of Anne Boleyn... She has been seen in various places, particularly at the several homes where she once lived, and accompanied by the phantom coaches and headless horses that have always been associated with witchcraft and devil worship.

At Blickling Hall in Norfolk, Anne Boleyn makes a spectacular appearance every year upon the anniversary of her death. She drives up the avenue to the Hall in a coach, drawn by headless horses and a headless horseman, holding her dripping and severed head in her lap... Sometimes the whole grisly equipage vanishes into the air, sometimes Anne alone enters the Hall and walks the corridors until dawn. A similar ghastly vision has been seen driving furiously along the roads of Norfolk, followed by an otherworldly strange blue light.

Every Christmas-time, the ghost of Anne Boleyn has been reported in Kent, being driven up the avenue of Hever Castle at a furious pace and in a funeral coach drawn by six black headless horses. It was here, in this thirteenth-century castle, under the magnificent oak, that Henry courted both Anne and her sister Mary.

Also during Christmas-time, the Rochford district of Essex is haunted for twelve nights by a headless witch, dressed in a rich silken gown. Anne Boleyn lived at Rochford Hall when she was a girl.

The ghost of Anne Boleyn has often been seen standing at a window at Windsor Castle, but Anne's most persistent haunting is in the Tower, where she met her death...

The Bloody Tower Anne Boleyn was buried in the Church of St. Peter ad Vincular, within the Tower itself. Many years later her coffin was opened and she was identified by her infamous sixth finger. She is said to haunt this little church with a ghostly ritual in the aisle. Around 1880, this was witnessed by an officer of the guard, who noticed a light shining inside the church and asked the sentry outside what it was. The soldier said he did not know, nor did he wish to investigate the phenomenon. So the officer mounted a ladder, peered into the window and saw the church filled with an eerie glowing light, and a procession of people dressed in Elizabethan costume moving along the aisle. At the head of the procession was a splendidly dressed and bejewelled woman whose face ressembled the portrait of Anne Boleyn. Suddenly, the procession vanished, leaving the church in utter darkness.

The ghostly appearances of Anne Boleyn in the Tower are, as a rule, more horrific. In 1817 a sentry had a fatal heart attack after meeting her on a stairway, and in 1864 a soldier was court-martialled for being found asleep on duty. He claimed to have gone in a swoon after meeting the white figure of "a woman wearing a queer-looking bonnet with no head in it." - "Who goes there?" he yelled, and when he got no reply he made a thrust with his fixed bayonet. The following moment "a fiery flash" ran up his rifle and gave him a burning shock. Several witnesses told the court that they had seen the same headless woman in white near the Lieutenant's Lodgings that night. One officer who was in the Bloody Tower had heard the sentry yelling and saw him thrusting at the ghostly intruder with his bayonet. He saw the spectre walking through the bayonet... and through the sentry as well. The court-martial found the sentry not guilty.

In 1933, according to some newspaper reports, the ghost of Anne Boleyn again walked straight into the bayonet of a guard, and scared him so much he fled from his post shouting for help. The headless body of Anne Boleyn also appears near the place of her execution and some have even witnessed her walking in the Tower, carrying her head...

Crop Circles

The original crop circles were exactly that - circular patterns of flattened crops, often created in mysterious circumstances overnight. During the last 20 years, though, crop circles have evolved into complex geometric shapes, like the DNA double helix or the nautilus shell.

In 1966, an Australian sugar cane farmer said he saw a saucer-shaped spaceship rise up from a swamp before flying away. When he looked at the landing site, he found the reeds intricately woven in a clockwise direction on top of the water. There are many other anecdotal accounts of crop circles appearing in alien UFO literature, where sometimes the crops were burnt, otherwise flattened.

But in 1991, two men from Southampton, England, admitted they conceived the whole idea as a prank some 15 years earlier. They made their masterpiece using planks, rope, hats and wire - and could create a 40-foot circle in 15 minutes. The only reason they came clean was because one of the men, Bower, was running up considerable mileage on his car and had to convince his wife he wasn't having an affair. He continues to demonstrate the art today.

Ghost Of Freddy Jackson

Here is an interesting photograph that was taken in 1919. It is a group photo of Goddard's squadron, men who had served in the Royal Air Force during World War 2.

The ghost in this picture can be seen just behind the 4th man from the left in the top row (enlarged to show detail). This ghost is supposed to be Freddy Jackson. Jackson had died in an accident just two days before the picture was taken and his funeral was held the same day the picture was shot.

Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

Brown Lady of Raynham Hall ghost photograph, Captain Hubert C. Provand. First published in Country Life magazine, 1936

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall is a ghost which reportedly haunts Raynham Hall in Norfolk. It became one of the most famous hauntings in Great Britain when the image of the 'Brown Lady' was captured by photographers from Country Life magazine who were photographing the staircase in 1936. The 'Brown Lady' is so named because of the brown brocade dress it is claimed she wears.

Identity of the ghost

Lady Dorothy Walpole

According to legend, the 'Brown Lady of Raynham Hall' is the ghost of Lady Dorothy Walpole (1686-1726), the sister of Robert Walpole, generally regarded as the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. She was the second wife of Charles Townshend, who was notorious for his violent temper. The story says that when Townshend discovered that his wife had committed adultery with Lord Wharton he punished her by locking her in her rooms in the family home, Raynham Hall. According to Mary Wortley Montagu, Dorothy was in fact entrapped by the Countess of Wharton. She invited Dorothy over to stay for a few days knowing that her husband would never allow her to leave it, not even to see her children. She remained at Raynham Hall until her death in 1726 from smallpox.

Sightings

The first recorded sighting of the ghost was made by Lucia C Stone concerning a gathering at Raynham Hall at Christmas 1835. Stone says that Lord Charles Townsend had invited various guests to the Hall, including a Colonel Loftus, to join in the Christmas festivities. Loftus and another guest named Hawkins said they had seen the 'Brown Lady' one night as they approached their bedrooms, noting in particular the dated brown dress she wore. The following evening Loftus claimed to have seen the 'Brown Lady' again, later reporting that on this occasion he was drawn to the spectre's empty eye-sockets, dark in the glowing face. Loftus' sightings led to some staff permanently leaving Raynham Hall.

Frederick Marryat claimed to have seen the Brown Lady in 1836

The next sighting of the 'Brown Lady' was made in 1836 by Captain Frederick Marryat, a friend of novelist Charles Dickens, and the author of a series of popular sea novels. It is said that Marryat requested that he spend the night in the haunted room at Raynham Hall to prove his theory that the haunting was caused by local smugglers anxious to keep people away from the area. Writing in 1917, Florence Marryat said of her father's experience:
‘…he took possession of the room in which the portrait of the apparition hung, and in which she had been often seen, and slept each night with a loaded revolver under his pillow. For two days, however, he saw nothing, and the third was to be the limit of his stay. On the third night, however, two young men (nephews of the baronet), knocked at his door as he was undressing to go to bed, and asked him to step over to their room (which was at the other end of the corridor), and give them his opinion on a new gun just arrived from London. My father was in his shirt and trousers, but as the hour was late, and everybody had retired to rest except themselves, he prepared to accompany them as he was. As they were leaving the room, he caught up his revolver, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” he said, laughing. When the inspection of the gun was over, the young men in the same spirit declared they would accompany my father back again, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” they repeated, laughing also. The three gentlemen therefore returned in company.
The corridor was long and dark, for the lights had been extinguished, but as they reached the middle of it, they saw the glimmer of a lamp coming towards them from the other end. “One of the ladies going to visit the nurseries,” whispered the young Townshends to my father. Now the bedroom doors in that corridor faced each other, and each room had a double door with a space between, as is the case in many old-fashioned houses. My father, as I have said, was in shirt and trousers only, and his native modesty made him feel uncomfortable, so he slipped within one of the outer doors (his friends following his example), in order to conceal himself until the lady should have passed by.
I have heard him describe how he watched her approaching nearer and nearer, through the chink of the door, until, as she was close enough for him to distinguish the colors and style of her costume, he recognised the figure as the facsimile of the portrait of “The Brown Lady”. He had his finger on the trigger of his revolver, and was about to demand it to stop and give the reason for its presence there, when the figure halted of its own accord before the door behind which he stood, and holding the lighted lamp she carried to her features, grinned in a malicious and diabolical manner at him. This act so infuriated my father, who was anything but lamb-like in disposition, that he sprang into the corridor with a bound, and discharged the revolver right in her face. The figure instantly disappeared - the figure at which for several minutes three men had been looking together – and the bullet passed through the outer door of the room on the opposite side of the corridor, and lodged in the panel of the inner one. My father never attempted again to interfere with "The Brown Lady of Raynham”.'
Lady Townsend reported that the 'Brown Lady' was next seen in 1926, when her son and his friend claimed to have seen the ghost on the staircase, identifying the ghostly figure with the portrait of Lady Dorothy Walpole which then hung in the haunted room.

Country Life magazine

Raynham Hall

On 19 September 1936 Captain Hubert C. Provand and Indre Shira, London-based photographers working for Country Life magazine, were taking photographs of Raynham Hall for an article to appear later in the year. The two men's account claims that they had already taken a photograph of the Hall's main staircase, and were setting up to take a second when Shira saw 'a vapoury form gradually assuming the appearance of a woman' and moving down the stairs towards them. Under Shira's direction Provand quickly took the cap off the lens while Shira pressed the trigger to activate the camera's flash light. Later, when the negative was developed, the famous image of the 'Brown Lady' was revealed. The account of Provand and Shira's ghostly experience at Raynham Hall was published in Country Life magazine on 26 December 1936, along with the photograph of the 'Brown Lady'. The photograph and the account of its taking also appeared in the December 1936 edition of Life magazine.
Soon after the noted paranormal investigator Harry Price interviewed Provand and Shira and reported: 'I will say at once I was impressed. I was told a perfectly simple story: Mr Indre Shira saw the apparition descending the stairs at the precise moment when Captain Provand’s head was under the black cloth. A shout – and the cap was off and the flashbulb fired, with the results which we now see. I could not shake their story, and I had no right to disbelieve them. Only collusion between the two men would account for the ghost if it is a fake. The negative is entirely innocent of any faking'.
Experts called in by Country Life stated that the photograph and its negative did not appear to have been interfered with. Since then, however, some critics have claimed that Shira faked the image by painting grease or a similar substance on the lens in the shape of a figure, or by himself deliberately moving down the stairs during an exposure. Others claim that the image is an accidental double exposure or that light somehow got into the camera.

The Amityville Horror

The house as it appears today

In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and Kathy's three children moved into 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial house in Amityville, a suburban neighborhood located on the south shore of Long Island, New York. Thirteen months before the Lutzes moved in, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. had shot and killed six members of his family at the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there.


112 Ocean Avenue remained empty for thirteen months after the DeFeo murders. In December 1975, George and Kathleen Lutz bought the house for what was considered to be a bargain price of $80,000. The six-bedroom house was built in Dutch Colonial style, and had a distinctive gambrel roof. It also had a swimming pool and a boathouse, as it was located on a canal. George and Kathy married in July 1975 and each had their own homes, but they wanted to start afresh with a new property. Kathy had three children from a previous marriage, Daniel, 9, Christopher, 7, and Melissa (Missy), 5. They also owned a crossbreed Malamute/Labrador dog named Harry. During their first inspection of the house, the real estate broker told them about the DeFeo murders of the previous November, and asked if this changed their opinion about wanting to buy it. After discussing the matter, they decided that it was not an issue.
The Lutz family moved in on December 19, 1975. Much of the DeFeo family furniture was still in the house, since it had been purchased for $400 as part of the deal. A friend of George Lutz learned about the history of the house, and insisted on having it blessed. At the time, George was a non-practicing Methodist and had no experience of what this would entail. Kathy was a non-practicing Catholic and explained the process. George knew a Catholic priest named Father Ray who agreed to carry out the house blessing. (In Anson's book the priest is referred to as Father Mancuso for privacy reasons. The now-deceased priest's real name was Father Ralph J. Pecoraro.)
Father Mancuso was a lawyer, a Judge of the Catholic Court and a psychotherapist who lived at the local Sacred Heart Rectory. He arrived to perform the blessing while George and Kathy were unpacking their belongings on the afternoon of December 18, 1975, and went into the building to carry out the rites. When he flicked the first holy water and began to pray, he heard an audible, masculine voice demand that he "get out." When leaving the house, Father Mancuso did not mention this incident to either George or Kathy. On December 24, 1975, Father Mancuso telephoned George Lutz and advised him to stay out of the room where he had heard the mysterious voice. This was a room on the second floor that Kathy planned to use as a sewing room, and had formerly been the bedroom of Marc and John Matthew DeFeo. The telephone call was cut short by static, and following his visit to the house, Father Mancuso allegedly developed a high fever and blisters on his hands similar to stigmata.

At first, George and Kathy Lutz experienced nothing unusual in the house. Talking about their experiences subsequently, they reported that it was as if they "were each living in a different house."
Some of the experiences of the Lutz family at the house have been described as follows:

• George would wake up around 3:15 every morning and would go out to check the boathouse. Later he would learn that this was the estimated time of the DeFeo killings.
• The house was plagued by swarms of flies despite the winter weather.
• Kathy had vivid nightmares about the murders and discovered the order in which they occurred, and the rooms where they took place. The Lutzes' children also began sleeping on their stomachs, in the same way that the dead bodies in the DeFeo murders had been found.
• Kathy would feel a sensation as if "being embraced" in a loving manner, by an unseen force.
• George discovered a small hidden room (around four feet by five feet) behind shelving in the basement. The walls were painted red and the room did not appear in the blueprints of the house. The room came to be known as "The Red Room." This room had a profound effect on their dog Harry, who refused to go near it and cowered as if sensing something negative.
• There were cold spots and odors of perfume and excrement in areas of the house where no wind drafts or piping would explain the source.
• While tending to the fire, George and Kathy saw the image of a demon with half his head blown out. It was burned into the soot in the back of the fireplace.
• The Lutzes' five year old daughter, Missy, developed an imaginary friend named "Jodie," a demonic pig-like creature with glowing red eyes.
• George would be woken up by the sound of the front door slamming. He would race downstairs to find the dog sleeping soundly at the front door. Nobody else heard the sound although it was loud enough to wake the house.
• George would hear what was described as a "German marching band tuning up" or what sounded like a clock radio playing not quite on frequency. When he went downstairs the noise would cease.
• George realized that he bore a strong resemblance to Ronald DeFeo, Jr., and began drinking at The Witches' Brew, the bar where DeFeo was once a regular customer.
• When closing Missy's window, which Missy said Jody climbed out of, Kathy saw red eyes glowing at her.
• While in bed, Kathy received red welts on her chest caused by an unseen force and was levitated two feet off the bed.
• Locks, doors and windows in the house were damaged by an unseen force.
• Cloven hoofprints attributed to an enormous pig appeared in the snow outside the house on January 1, 1976.
• Blood oozed from walls in the hall, and also from the keyhole of the playroom door in the attic.
• A 12-inch (30 cm) crucifix, hung in the livingroom by Kathy, revolved until it was upside down and gave off a sour smell.
• George tripped over a 4-foot-high (1.2 m) China lion which was an ornament in the living room, and was left with bite marks on one of his ankles.
• George saw Kathy transform into an old woman of ninety, "the hair wild, a shocking white, the face a mass of wrinkles and ugly lines, and saliva dripping from the toothless mouth."
• Missy would sing constantly in her room. Whenever she would go out of the room she stopped singing. But going back to the room,she'd go back to sing where she left off.

After deciding that something was wrong with their house that they could not explain rationally, George and Kathy Lutz carried out a blessing of their own on January 8, 1976. George held a silver crucifix while they both recited the Lord's Prayer, and while in the living room George allegedly heard a chorus of voices telling them “Will you stop?!”
By mid-January 1976, and after another attempt at a house blessing by George and Kathy, they experienced what would turn out to be their final night in the house. The Lutzes declined to give a full account of the events that took place on this occasion, describing them as "too frightening."
After getting in touch with Father Mancuso, the Lutzes decided to take some belongings and stay at Kathy’s mother’s house in nearby Deer Park, New York until they had sorted out the problems with the house. They claimed that the phenomena followed them there, with the final scene of Anson's book describing "greenish-black slime" coming up the staircase towards them. On January 14, 1976 George and Kathy Lutz, with their three children and their dog Harry, left 112 Ocean Avenue leaving all of their possessions behind. The next day, a mover came in to remove all of the possessions to send to the Lutzes. He reported no paranormal phenomena while inside the house.