Single woman, own broomstick and cat? This cottage is for you!
For sale, bijou cottage in a picturesque seaside village, charmingly known to locals as The Cage. Two beds, bath and utility rooms, plus thick and foreboding indoor atmosphere that owners describe as ‘like walking in jelly’.
Some modernisation required: replacing electrics, lick of paint, exorcising undead, etc. Comes with vacant possession (lawyer’s note: that’s possession in the demonic
sense). Some previous tenants, including one hanged in the Tudor period for black magic witchcraft, may still reside but are harmless, apart from intermittent explosions of evil.
Would suit single woman with own broomstick and cat. Early inspection is advised, definitely not after dark.
Essex mum Vanessa Mitchell told True Horror (C4) why she bought the St osyth house, also called the Witch’s Prison, in 2004: ‘It was calling to me, needing me, wanting me — I just had to be the owner.’
Despite a series of terrifying spectral encounters, including blood spattered on the floors and apparitions of hooded figures floating like smoke, Vanessa still owns the place (the show didn’t reveal that she’s put it on the market several times, most recently last year for £235,000).
Vanessa says she has a mission, to free the souls trapped in the building: ‘Maybe that’s why I was put on this earth.’ A cynic might counter that Vanessa is already fulfilling her life’s vocation: she’s an experienced holiday sales rep, and The Cage makes a popular spooky resort.
Last night, for instance, you could have stayed there on a seven-hour ghost-hunting expedition organised by professionals at Bump In The Night Paranormal, at £50 a head. How much it costs if you want to bring your body too, their website doesn’t specify.
This dramatised documentary, with contributions from Vanessa and friends, as well as eerie reconstructions filmed in the house itself, would have been more convincing if it hadn’t tried so hard to sell the idea that the ghosts could do physical harm.
It’s easy to imagine this former jail, where a midwife and healer called Ursula Kemp was put to death in 1572 during a witch-hunt, has an ominous atmosphere.
But the more that bloody hands stroked the curtains or Halloween faces gurned at the windows, the less I felt inclined to believe. The real horrors of the night were reported on Iran Unveiled: Taking On The Ayatollahs (ITV). Women in the hardline Islamic republic, one of only two countries where headscarfs or hijabs are compulsory, are defying the law...and facing jail for up to 20 years.
These modern-day suffragettes are incredibly brave. Thousands have joined the White Wednesday protests, wearing snowwhite hijabs to register their anger. Demonstrators have been pepper-sprayed and beaten up by police: at one protest, seven people were killed.
Many dare to go further, posting selfies with their heads uncovered. A few, breathtakingly courageous and defiant, stand on Tehran’s revolution Street waving their hijabs on sticks like flags, until the security police drag them away.
The women hope that, by forcing the government to relax the law, they can weaken the despots’ grip on power.
‘If you break this first wall, then the rest will get easier,’ said one woman, Masih. This documentary was screened too late at night and went on much too long, with lengthy subtitled segments of interviews that told us little.
It would have been more valuable, edited hard into a half-hour slot and aired earlier. These women should be held up as inspirations for us, not tucked away when few are watching.