War ghosts

I recently came upon a photocopy of the following news clipping from the Sunday Dispatch

(26 Oct 1941), which George Ives (1867-1950), friend of Oscar Wilde, had stuck in one of his 45 scrapbooks. It seems a bit far-fetched!

B.B.C. GIRLS ARE DRIVEN FROM HOME BY GHOSTS

ANSWER TO LAST NIGHT’S RADIO RIDDLE

A B.B.C. hostel for girls in Bristol was closed in March this year because of ghosts. “Not one ghost,” Miss G. Methvea [typo for Ruthven] Brownlee said last night, “but seven. I saw them myself.” Miss Brownlee is now in charge of a B.B.C. hostel at Weston-super-Mare.

In peace time she is a photographer well known throughout the West country. Last night, when she was giving a fiveminutes talk for Fire Guards in the Forces Programme, listeners heard these words: “It was a ghost, but that is another story. Goodnight.” Everyone wanted to know the “other story”. Well, here it is – as told in Miss Brownlee’s own words to the Sunday Dispatch:

“I must start with the bomb which fell on my own home in Charlotte-street at 6.20 p.m. on November 24 last year. The bomb destroyed all I had, and I felt that my one salvation would be to find a job. I found one at Oldbury House, which the B.B.C. had taken over as a hostel for girls. There were 28 or 30 of them, all aged between 18 and 26, and we had a staff of seven. The house is a very old one, reputed to have been used by Prince Rupert as his headquarters when Bristol was besieged in the days of Cromwell. Underground tunnels are said to run from the house to the centre of the city and to the old Bristol Fort.

THE MONK

“I slept on the ground floor by the front door. I was awakened frequently by thuds, by heavy dragging sounds, and by the sobbing of a child. Then – I saw the ghosts. There was a very tall, thin man, dressed like a monk, in long dark robes, with a bunch of keys hanging from a girdle at his waist. There was a little old woman, dressed rather like a housekeeper of the same period. Finally, there were five ladies, always together, dressed alike in clinging robes with high headdresses.

“I discovered that there had been at one time an opening from my room to the stables beyond. It was here that I first saw the monk. After that, at frequent intervals, I saw not only the monk and the housekeeper also, and the five women together. The women seemed to stand on a balcony, as if in a vision. They talked agitatedly among themselves, and in the background there was the monk again, seemingly pleading for something. EIGHT SAW IT

“I said nothing about all this to the girls. I did not think it would be good to rouse their imaginations. But one day several girls came to me and told me of things they had seen. Their experiences corresponded exactly with my own. Eight girls saw these presences in the house exactly as I did. The other 20 experienced nothing at all. Often two or three of the girls saw the figures simultaneously.

“On other occasions one girl would see a figure coming through the door, and a minute or so later another girl would see it at the end of the passage, and later still yet another girl would see it at the foot of the stairs. Since then, so far as I know, no one has slept at the place, although I believe the rooms are used in the daytime by the Ministry of Works.”

• In World War

II, my father, Lance Sieveking, was West Regional Programme Director of the BBC, based in Bristol. He recalled: “Bristol and Clifton were full of friendly people warm and hospitable, who let me share in their interests, and the kindest and most full of interests was Brownie – as Gladys

Ruthven Brownlee was universally known. She was about 50, and tirelessly, enthusiastically energetic, the centre of a score of social activities. She ran the Arts Club and Theatre, at the corner of Charlotte Street and Park Street.”

On 12 May 1940, Brownie suggested my father cycle to a village called Rickford, about 11 miles outside Bristol, to meet an artist called Maisie Meiklejohn. They got married in 1949 on the anniversary of their first meeting, and I was born later that year.

Paul Sieveking

FT founding co-editor, London

Alan Murdie comments: World War II certainly produced some colourful ghosts. These included a monk with the ears of a dog described on a Brains’ Trust broadcast in December 1943; the phantom chicken of Pond Square, Highgate (related by Peter Underwood in Haunted London, 1972, and Jeffrey Vallance, FT401:46); and a fair few black dog sightings. Talking monks were a feature of this era until the 1960s, but generally with a more spiritual content implied. Then there was the poltergeist outbreak associated with the moving of the Witch Stone at Great Leighs, Essex (Sunday Pictorial, 15 Oct 1944) and the poltergeist at Gill House, Aspartia, Cumbria (Daily Mail,

3 Aug 1943). Miss Brownlee’s Oldbury House haunting starts to approach the later claims concerning Sanford Orcas Manor in Dorset.