A TALE OF THE UNEXPECTEDDuring the summer I taught for five weeks at a summer school. There’s nothing remarkable about this, except that the summer school uses the exquisite buildings and top-notch facilities of a prestigious public school. For three of the five weeks my classroom was on the first floor of the oldest building of all – construction began in 1572.
One night, when a friend was clearing up and arranging desks (same building but before I got there), she heard something from upstairs. She described it as the sound of something dragging on the floor. The other teachers were long gone and had left the front-door key so she could lock up on her way out. Confident that she was the only person in the building, the noise made her feel uncomfortable and she left quickly.
H. told the Director of Studies about this, who casually mentioned a teacher from a previous year reporting something similar. That was when I began to get interested. I asked a friendly (but doubtful) security guard whether he’d heard stories about this building and he told me “There’s a rumour”. I also asked a chap in his 70s who runs the [Boarding School] Museum, and he told me that “a fey Irishman” who taught in the building a decade ago constantly reported sightings of a ghost. “Right!”, I thought, “That’s four different and independent suggestions of something unusual”. Bearing in mind that these ‘stories’ amounted only to rumour and suggestion, I decided to go there at night.
I’m open-minded but sceptical on the matter of ghosts, having never had an experience of a ghost or even of anything ghostly (this, in spite of trying in vain to seek out ghosts in my teens). If pushed one way or the other, I’m inclined to disbelieve in spirits or ‘presences’. Yet – do humans have a ‘soul’ or not? Who can definitively answer this question? Science can weigh, measure, observe, examine, etc, but it is ultimately limited by the tools and equipment we have (thus far) devised for its observation/examination, etc. We are not godlike or omniscient and cannot know everything. What, exactly, happens to consciousness after death? I’m strongly inclined to think that it dies along with – and within – our flesh. However, given the impossible task of empirically proving or disproving the “reality” of the metaphysical (‘above or beyond physics &/or the physical’), I think only the most dogmatic thinker would vigorously and flatly deny the mere
possibility of ghosts.
Here, then, is what happened. I went to this building at about 2.15am with three others (two women and a man). We went up several flights of oak-panelled stairs to the top of the building. I’d had a couple of beers during the evening but was not what you would describe as “drunk”. The three of us sat around two desks pushed together. Someone suggested we join hands to “link” our “energy”. In spite of thinking this a corny idea, I went along with it. One of the women began to speak aloud saying things such as “If anything is there, we wish it peace of mind”; “If anyone is there, it can make itself known to us”, etc. Of course, nothing happened. We were silent much more than we spoke. I became aware that we were using the third person and suggested she use “you” rather than the more distant “it”. She carried on in the same manner as before but in the second person, with the other three of us occasionally chiming in “Please reveal yourself to us; we don’t wish you any harm”. etc, etc.
We continued like this for about ten minutes. It seems foolish re-telling it and initially felt foolish at the time. We were high up in a building that perches on top of a hill. There were no main roads nearby and it was the early hours of the morning, so there would have been few or no flights into or out of the nearby private airport and few people on the streets. However, I thought I could hear a very feint growl emanating from my right-hand side near the window. I told myself again and again during the joining-of-hands that old buildings – especially those lined with wood – are subject to all kinds of ambient noise and that they creak occasionally, especially where beams, window sills, other "structural things" join together with the fabric of the building. This growl was intermittent, very much off-and-on – it wasn’t a particularly sinister growl but it didn’t really sound like the environmental noise of an old building, either. It was so feint I didn’t bother mentioning it to the others: a) because I wasn’t sure whether I had actually heard the sound of something external or whether I had imagined it, and b) because I didn’t want to talk over it (and thereby drown it out) if and when it recurred. The noise was so quiet it would’ve been obscured by a low speaking voice.
After ten minutes we gave it up and concluded we’d seen nor heard anything untoward. The DoS and the man headed back to the lodgings, leaving just me and a girlfriend. We chatted about various things, including our experience (or lack of) in the building, and agreed that we’d heard the odd creak but nothing “ghostly”. I didn’t bother mentioning the growl – to my sceptical mind it had been inconclusive, just something-and-nothing. After a few minutes of just the two of us, we decided to head back too as it was very late. I said to H. that I’d like to have a couple of minutes sitting there alone and that I’d see her outside by the door on the eroded concrete step. She understood and set off. The growl didn’t recur. I’d secretly wanted to come to the building alone, at night, but had been too cowardly. I knew that I wouldn’t have the nerve to come back alone, so wasn’t going to let this opportunity to be on my own slip through my fingers. I took my time getting up and leaving the room but nothing happened at all.
I descended the stairs slowly, glad that I was alone on the stairwell. I had done something of a mental “wrap” as I left the room (audited our experience and concluded that our time had been uneventful). As I walked slowly down the stairs I began to think of the stampede of boys’ feet and boots on the bowed wooden stairs during the daytime, in daylight, over centuries. Then I heard the growl again - very loud and directly into my right ear as if originating from two inches away, over my shoulder. It was unmistakably the same noise I thought I’d heard before but this time it left me in no doubt. Here was that same noise only much, much louder and seeming to come from an unsettlingly close range.
I have found no explanation for this. The first time I heard the noise (in the room), it was very quiet. It certainly wouldn’t have been audible from halfway down the stairs. I have used the word ‘growl’ because this is the most suitable word in the language to describe it, but a growl must have a source, even if it is only the building itself? If the windowpanes or window frame made the growl (which seems unlikely), how could the growl then recur on an enclosed staircase (where there are no windows)? I know that the sceptical would say that the occasion itself caused me to hallucinate or imagine, but my senses are very reliable and I am not a particularly fanciful person (in spite of going looking for ghosts!!! It takes a lot for me to overcome my natural scepticism). I’ve never had an auditory hallucination before.
It felt as if the hostile growl had followed me down the staircase to surprise and target me from behind, directly into my ear.
The shock must have showed on my face because when I arrived at the front door, the first thing H. said was "Are you all right?"
(On ghosts:) “I used to be indecisive but now I’m not so sure.”
