BREAKING CONVENTION
A battle for the soul of psychedelia GARY LACHMAN
thick upon the ground. They may appear both in and out of doors, often at historic or ruined buildings. Actor Sir Alec Guinness saw one at a hotel room in India in 1984, during the filming of A Passage to India. In a letter to his wife dated 23 March 1984 made public in 2014, he wrote how: “A very conventional white ghost appeared, an elderly... woman in grey white and heavily veiled… I couldn’t make out her face. She moved... with dignity down the side of my bed and as I clicked on the light she disappeared.” ( D.Mail, 15 Feb 2014).
For Jaffe, elements of significance are found in the white clothing (representing a burial shroud) the anonymous female figure and the fact that she moves from place to place (i.e. ‘walks’). Alternatively, her white attire may be the gown of a bride dressed for her wedding, the point where she ‘dies’ to her old life and begins a fuller one in marriage. The ghost does not necessarily haunt with a view to committing harm, but can be dangerous or serve as a warning, typically of an impending death. Rather than actually causing the accidents at the Yaza, the ghost, like an Irish Banshee, might be a harbinger of them. Taking a Jungian perspective, Jaffe links her with the different aspects of classical goddesses; she notes the double or triple aspects of such deities: the virgin, mother and crone in mythology. For Jaffe, the White Lady is an expression of the unconscious mind in which such symbols dwell, and which manifest beyond the body, capable of taking on a degree of objective reality and emerging into consciousness. The conscious mind typically interprets them as discarnate spirits.
This is a complex theory, sharing some similarity with the theories of GNM Tyrrell advanced in his book Apparitions (1942). However, the mechanism whereby this could occur remains – like consciousness itself – mysterious. Despite Jung collaborating with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli to study paranormal phenomena and meaningful coincidences, nothing but a vague hypothesis could be developed to account for them. Neither Pauli (who was notorious for laboratory equipment breaking down around him) or the semimystical Jung could achieve a synthesis of psychology with the competing mathematical models applied in physics at the sub-atomic level (See Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, 1952). Lacking any fundamental scientific understanding of consciousness, empirically testing such ideas with apparitions is currently beyond us. Jaffe notes how those who try to lay hands on White Lady apparitions – as one of her correspondents had attempted to do with his brother – simply find she evades their touch, melting away like a vapour.
Three further grounds for rejecting purely psychosocial explanations for White Lady experiences – i.e. that they stem from stories already embedded in culture – may also be proposed. Firstly, there may be more than one witness at a time or they may be seen by consecutive witnesses. Secondly, what may be raised as a partial negative refutation of the idea can be found with the impact of Susan Hill’s The
Woman in Black (1989). This has been a tremendously successful book and play, translated into Spanish and other languages and released internationally as a film. But we do not seem to be facing a resulting flood of ‘Women in Black’ sightings anywhere it has been shown.
Thirdly, the example of certain wholly invented ghost stories on bridges can be raised. A prime specimen is the haunting of Potter Heigham Bridge on the Norfolk broads. According to a chapter in the book
Ghosts of the Broads (1931) by Dr Charles Sampson, noted medical man and yachting author, Potter Heigham Bridge is haunted every 31 May by a phantom coach that collides with the parapet. It is one of the best stories in the book, going back to 31 May 1741 when Lady Evelyn Carew married Sir Godfrey Haslitt at Norwich Cathedral, a union achieved by selling her soul to the Devil, aided by a local sorceress.
The bridal party returned to Batswick Hall and were celebrating when just before midnight an unearthly coach pulled by four black horses – initially believed to be that of a Bishop – drew up outside. Skeletons leapt out and ran into the hall and seized the shrieking and struggling bride, dragging her into the coach, which then tore away at a breakneck speed, surrounded by an eerie light. As it crossed the bridge, the carriage swerved and struck the parapet, smashing it into a thousand flaming pieces, casting the screaming bride, her skeleton kidnappers, horses and all into the dark waters of the River Thurne. Batswick Hall burnt down the same night. Sampson avers that at midnight on the anniversary, this diabolical wreck is repeated, citing five recent witnesses and mentioning his own plans to try and see it.
Though one of the best stories in Sampson’s book, it received little attention until Peter Underwood included it in his influential A Gazetteer of British Ghosts (1971) stating that Sampson had told him of seeing the coach himself. Mention by Underwood led to the story appearing elsewhere, such as in Anthony Hippesley’s
Coxe’s Haunted Britain (1973), though omitting the anniversary appearance. Highly successful reprints of Sampson’s book by Jarrolds of Norwich in 1973, 1976 and 1982 found a ready audience among summer tourists by now flocking to the Norfolk Broads, which had opened up as a mass destination for inland boating holidays. The Potter Heigham coach also appeared in many popular ghost books; for example Frank Smyth in Ghosts and
Poltergeists (1976) speculated that all stemmed from an exaggerated folk account of the burning down of Batswick Hall.
However, apart from its implausibility, I very soon began to doubt Underwood’s claim of receiving the story direct from Sampson who had died in August 1940, when Underwood (born 1923) was just 17. Indeed, by the time Underwood included it in his Guide to Ghosts and Haunted Places (1996), his source changed to broadcaster AJ Alan (1883-1941) who lived locally. More pertinently, researcher MW Burgess ( Lantern 37, summer 1982) revealed Sampson’s story and the characters in it as complete inventions; there never was a Godfrey Haslitt or Evelyn Carew (the Carew baronetcy not being created until 1834). Unsurprisingly, the story and virtually everything else in Sampson’s book proved fictional.
But crucial to the argument here, despite the Potter Heigham coach story having receiving wide circulation by the 1980s (as Burgess recognised few could be expected to read his exposure) and many people optimistically waiting for it each year, there was not a single witness. Nor, despite its drama, does it seem to have inspired any similar stories, or sightings at any other locations.
Sampson also claimed that a skeleton haunted the bridge at Acle, Norfolk. No one has seen that either. From this one may surmise it is the experience that must come first, not the story, though the latter may colour subsequent interpretations.