People often want to believe in the supernatural - which makes the subject fertile ground for pranksters, hoaxers and con-artists. Let's take a look at...
- The Wiltshire Crop Circle Caper
- The BBC Presents: Ghostwatch
- The Cottingley Fairies
- The Hauntings of Borley Rectory
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| Doug Bower and Dave Chorley were behind many of England's crop circles... (Naprogramuji) |
The Wiltshire Crop Circle Caper
Returning from the pub one Wiltshire evening in 1976, Doug Bower suggested to his friend Dave Chorley that they should create a crop circle.
This wasn't completely out of nowhere - in 1966 a crop circle had appeared in Tully, Queensland without much explanation, which seems to have been the inspiration for Bower's prank. The two men used a wooden plank and a couple of bits of rope to make a handheld tool that resembled a child's swing. By holding the ropes and keeping one foot on the plank as they walked, the pranksters could flatten a path through a crop field - and thus could create large geometric patterns.
The prank caused quite a stir, and soon Wiltshire had become the UK's UFO hotspot. Self-appointed experts in the field of "cereology" (or the study of crop circles) emerged and the idea of aliens embedding messages in the crops certainly caught the public imagination. It probably helped that Wiltshire is the home of Stonehenge and boarders Somerset, the home of Glastonbury Tor and Arthurian legend - the place was primed for anything otherworldly!
More circles would emerge over the coming years, until in 1991 Bower and Chorley came forward and claimed that they were responsible for many of them. It's certainly the case that many circles are the work of humans (the Circlemakers art collective even specializes in making them) but plenty of UFO believers claim that the genuine article can be found amongst the fakes. For what it's worth, most farmers seem happy to put up with the occasional loss of crops in exchange for the impromptu (but lucrative) tourist attraction.
Though (at least the majority of) English circles seem to have been hoaxes, "The Natural History of Stafford-Shire" by Robert Plot in 1686 features phenomena similar to crop circles... though Plot reels off a number of possible explanations ranging from fairy rings to the weather.
It's not the only reference either - a pamphlet published in 1678 relates the tale of "The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News out of Hartford-shire" in which a wealthy farmer refused to pay the fee asked by a poor mower to cut three and a half acres of oats. The farmer even swore that he'd let the Devil mow the oats rather than paying the mower, which may have been a mistake. The oat fields seemed to burn over night, and in the morning were perfectly mowed with the oats left lying in the resulting rings... which didn't help the farmer, since he lacked the manpower to collect the crop!
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| Ghostwatch hinted at paranormal activity with cat yowls... () |
The BBC Presents: Ghostwatch
Did you know that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) once played a prank on eleven million viewers?
Set for Halloween in 1992, the program "Ghostwatch" was billed as a drama but presented as a 90 minute live-broadcast investigation from a haunted house. The show would center around the fictional Early family (Pamela with her daughters Suzanne and Kim) their London home and its resident ghost known as "Pipes."
To help sell the authenticity, the show would be presented by the trusted Michael Parkinson (alongside other well known personalities and a "parapsychologist") and use groundbreaking new technology such as an infrared camera to detect ghostly activity. What wasn't mentioned was the use of pioneering camera trickery - such as pixelating the face of an interviewee.
Things started off fairly normal - interviewers canvased the locals in the streets, getting all kinds of stories about the house. It's revealed that a murderous Victorian baby-farmer (yes, that was a thing) known as Mother Seddons was local to the area.
Meanwhile, the public are being encouraged to phone in their own ghost stories - and some are claiming to have seen a strange figure in the broadcast footage. To stir up things even further, an anonymous "social worker" calls in to claim that the disturbed criminal Raymond Tunstall (who claimed to have been possessed by Seddons) was found dead in the house having hanged himself... and when his body was discovered twelve days later, it had been partially eaten by the household's cats.
As the show goes on, Suzanne is caught knocking on the pipes to create the noise behind the haunting... only to suddenly speak in a distorted voice and develop cat-scratches across her face. She later disappears and is later heard behind a locked door. An attempt to force the door results in a member of the camera crew getting injured, but then everything seems to calm down.
Or does it? The parapsychologist suddenly points out that the footage in the broadcast is from earlier in the day. The broadcast resumes and the wounded camera man, Pamela and Kim are escorted from the house.... but a presenter is dragged into the darkness when they attempt to rescue Suzanne.
During the climax of the program, paranormal activity starts to happen in the TV studio as well as the house, with the presenters and production team fleeing the scene. Only Parkinson remains, wandering the darkened studio as disembodied cats yowl and he begins to show signs of being possessed.
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| The Yorkshire countryside can look like fairyland without human help... (Shane Rounce) |
The Cottingley Fairies
This one's fairly well known, but you can't really talk about British supernatural hoaxes without this classic. Taken in 1917 by cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, the Cottingley photographs depicted the girls surrounded by (or even dancing with) fairies, pixies and gnomes in the Yorkshire countryside.
Now keep in mind that this was from a time long before digital filters and photoshop. The images caused a real stir and became the subject of lectures and debates across England. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the author of Sherlock Holmes) was impressed by the images and promoted them - soon the Cottingley Fairies were all over the world.
In 1983, the girls upset the apple cart and confessed that the photos were fake. The fairies, it turned out, were simply line drawings fixed on hat pins!
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| Borley Rectory had a piano played by a spirit... or perhaps not! (Michał Franczak) |
The Hauntings of Borley Rectory
When Borley Rectory was built in 1862 by Reverend Henry Bull, he probably hadn't intended it to become Britain's most haunted house.
It didn't take long for supernatural visitations to begin, if local legends are to be believed. Tales of ghostly footsteps started popping up in 1863, while those who knew the Bulls claimed that they had spoken of ghostly nuns (whose grim fates feature in a number of local legends) and other apparitions haunting the property.
It turned out that Harry Price was still interested in the site, and in 1937 he took out a year's rental. During his tenure Price hosted a wide range of paranormal enthusiasts and investigators. Some séances held in the house even suggested that a nun had be murdered and buried in the cellar or well, while yet others involved a presence threatening to burn the place to the ground.
So that all sounds pretty spooky, right? Well, it turns out that many of the occupants and guests of the rectory may have been more than they initially appeared.
During the "Foyster" tenancy, the resident Reverand was joined by a character known as Frank Peerless (aka François D'Arles or Frank Lawless.) Peerless, it seems, was quite the Cockney rogue - and he soon charmed the younger, isolated and bored Marianne Foyster. The two covered up an affair with tales of the supernatural, even using an using the sighting of an apparition as an explanation when the Reverend caught Peerless hanging around his Marianne's bedchamber.
Frank also holds the rare distinction of being punched by a ghost. Though more likely a result of turbulent nocturnal activities with Marianne, he concocted a story of leaping out of bed to face a shadowy apparition, only for his blow to pass straight through the specter. It's return blow was significantly more effective, and Peerless appeared at the breakfast table with a black eye!
There's also the matter of paranormal investigator Harry Price. It's perhaps fitting that the accounts of his investigations and exploits are a bit murky, but we do know that many of his peers suspected he may have been faking at least some of the paranormal events. In once incident, journalist Charles Sutton claimed that he had caught Price with pockets full of pebbles after experiencing a spirit flinging around stones.
Another tenant who stayed with Harry Bull in 1918 and returned to stay with the Foysters claimed that there was more going on than met the eye. Louis Mayerling claimed that the Bulls had delighted in tricking visitors with the various nooks, crannies and passages dotting the house, reaching through grates to ring bells or even playing a piano by using a poker pushed through a grate to pluck the strings through a gap in the wall.
Mayerling also claimed that the Foysters had quietly encouraged the haunted reputation of the rectory and turned it into something of a tourist attraction, as the church stipend wasn't really enough for comfort. Tricks like installing a water heater that "knocked" and embedding small amounts of phosphorous powder into the skirting boards to create short-lived glows were employed, as was having him walk the grounds in a pulled up dark cape. He also noted that the walls of the rectory had been stuffed with sea sand to save on costs, but his meant that the place was constantly damp - and that any thing written on the walls had a tendency to fade away in a couple of hour, making it idea for ghostly" messages.
Interestingly, Mayerling admitted to one incident for which he had no explanation. During a séance, the kitchen bells suddenly clanged together (something he had been unable to achieve when operating them himself) and a burst of silver-blue lightning left him temporarily blind. One can find other explanations for this seemingly paranormal event (lightning, a stroke or the desire to play one last trick) but I'll leave his credibility up to you!
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