Ghosts of old houses
A Sunday House Chat
Last week Gerry had a cold, one so bad he took to his bed. So I bunked down in Pie’s room. Until she caught the cold. Then I headed down to the sofa. Now I have it, in fact we all have it, hey ho.
Skipping back to pre cold Helen, in an effort to avoid the lurgy, I lay in my makeshift bed reading in the glow of the stove until it died down to the orange embers. Lovely. I was reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s an incredible book, a modern twist on David Copperfield. Do you remember David Copperfield’s birth story? A young, slight and naive woman, Clara, whose husband has died during her pregnancy, gives birth to David at home. There’s an elderly aunt of the father at the birth, Miss Betsey Trotwood, and as the clock chimes midnight David Copperfield lets out his first cries. Betsey wants the baby to be a girl and leaves in high dudgeon when she finds out he is a boy. Remember that?
Demon Copperhead has a modern day trailer park equivalent of that scene. An AMAZING book by the way, one of the best I have read this year.
It got me thinking about birth stories and all the births and deaths that must have happened in this old house.
Our friend (Good Ship Katie’s husband)
did some research on our house and drew us a sort of family tree, no a ‘house occupant tree’ of all the people who lived here since 1871.
Our house is one big house now, but we think it was built as four flats, one room per fishing/ railway family. The deeds show it had four house numbers until the 1960’s when was converted into a house, and it got, wait for it, an inside loo! Anyway, I wrote more about that in this post.
Cameron researched all the occupants of number 41. I so wish I knew which part of the house that was! Anyway, it looks as though lots of people were born here. I am guessing they were born at home because we are talking pre NHS. I had my girl at home, but childbirth during the Victorian era for working class women must have been very different. Not the way the baby comes out obviously, still the same! But the limited medical care.
Here are some of the clippings from newspapers showing births and deaths.
In 1871 there is a mysterious child, a grandchild called Mary. Cameron wonders if she is an illegitimate child of the one of the daughters of the house. Or maybe a child of the son, Peter. Did his wife die?
I have said this before, but oh how I wish I could get a glimpse of this house in the past. It feels so tantalisingly near! All those births and deaths. What were they like?
In a recent episode of Uncanny, a podcast I listen to while I work because I love a good ghost story, they speak to a woman who says she experienced a ‘time slip’. She was walking down a street in Liverpool in the 1970’s when she suddenly becomes aware that the shops are all different, she sees an old fashioned ladies shop with stockings on a rail, the people are wearing 1940’s clothing. She says she thinks she somehow slipped back in time.
Time slips:
It seemed like an ordinary day on a street in England - until the scenery suddenly changed and the world appeared to be 'back in the 1940s'. The incredible case of this 'time slip' has been revealed in the new series of Uncanny on the BBC involving an off-duty policeman and a young woman.
A time slip is a concept where people are seemingly transported through time by unknown means, and it is a popular plot in fantasy and science fiction works. But there has been notable claims of the paranormal phenomena happening in real life - and one English street has allegedly seen multiple cases of time slips.
The road in question is Bold Street, in Liverpool. And a 'famous' example reportedly took place in 1996 when an off-duty police officer, and a woman in her 20s, were quickly aware of everyone on the street wearing clothes from the 1940s and 1950s. A book shop also allegedly turned into an old clothing store, while a van from the '1950s' came 'racing past' the officer.
Liverpool Echo
That’s what I want, a time slip! I am so jealous.
Just a wee sneaky time slip to our house back in 1871 please. I’d have a nosy around, listen into a few conversations, smell the smells… Find out who Mary was…
I think...
Am I jealous?
Actually I’m not sure. Maybe that would be terrifying.
Can you feel the past in your house? Have you spooked yourself with these thoughts? Let’s air these ghosts of old houses in the comments.
Tips if you love this stuff:
Follow my pal
for photos of Berwick and Tweedmouth in the past, he makes the past feel tantalisingly near.Listen to this old episode of This American Life: The House Near Loon Lake. A classic mystery, an old abandoned house.
Listen to this podcast episode of Haunted: The Thing in the Attic . What I love about this series is that they investigate the influence of our psychology on these strange experiences.
I just bought myself a second hand copy of Through the Tempests Dark and Wild: A Story of Mary Shelley by Darrow Sharon and Angela Barrett. ‘Spine-tingling fireside tales of lost loves and drowned sailors.’ I love Angela Barrett’s work.
Sleep well,
Helenx
I grew up in our family house. It was built by my ancestors in the late 18th Century, so we knew everyone who had ever lived in it. You could see the graveyard from the house, where all my ancestors were buried (except from the ones who emigrated).
My boyfriend and I were in the house when everyone else had gone out. He then proposed, and afterwards maintained it was the ghosts in the house that pressurised him to do so. Reader we were happily married for many years, until his death three years ago.
I LOVED this letter so much!!! Demon Copperhead was the best book I read all year as well. I think it's the best thing she's written since Poisonwood Bible. Thank you for sharing! Will be checking out all of these!