FORWARD
-For many the quaint valley of Dent dale is seen as little more than an un-spoilt view, a stone cobbled village street with an ever growing number of retired middle class women or couples who have bought into the seemingly idyllic countryside life style. On any particular day, whatever the weather ( in fact the worse the better it seems ) there is a constant stream of lonely dog walkers exercising their little gods. As most are lost in a romantic revere of their expeditions, or expectations offered by the dales, they have not had the luxury of time available in their all too short stays here to see the true soul of the valley.
However for those who keep watch over the decades, and take heed of events here, there is an altogether darker side to the valley, most of which can only be observed over time, or by being lucky ( or unlucky ) enough to live in certain areas that are known locally for high strangeness. During all of my life I have lived in one such hamlet, and even as a child slowly grew aware that all was not as it seemed, and that possibly, just possibly a world was being hidden from me out of necessity by my parents . A world that the occupants of this valley back then didnt ,and still today will not talk about, especially in front of other locals or even children. This side is buried as deep as the valleys history in the slave trade is. But as with many things in life the truth will out, however strange or unpalatable.
Whernside Manor
My childhood was spent being aware that adults had stories of strange happenings, or even events that could be described as hauntings. The ground zero for my stories was an old Georgian manor house next door. As adults never told us directly about the events, we as children, as children do, somehow knew something was amiss when we observed peoples attitude to the place, or little hints that were let slip accidentally. As a child my chief source of spookiness came from the son of a family who lived in another house in the hamlet. He was the same age as me and my friends. He would tell stories of visitors experiences while stopping over night at his parents house as guests in their B&B.
For many Halloweens we carried our turnip lanterns, and wore our home made masks around the grounds of this country house at night hoping to see a " ghost ". To me and my friends it was a game, but we also knew the truth was possibly more then that, and as this truth was forbidden, and we only over heard it in brief moments spoken in hushed tones by perturbed adults, this did nothing but excite and encourage us. What a world to spend your childhood in. A world that as an adult I quickly found to have not been over sold, or exaggerated.
So this place has shaped my life, and an interest in mysterious things. Is this place today still as it was back then ? Has time and a on going huge multi million pound renovation today changed the place or atmosphere of those grounds that I spent so many stormy dark Halloweens in ? The answer is no, and a quick walk into the grounds on a windy December night confirms this. Trades men have recent stories of strange lavender smells as they work there in recent months, and a film crew a few years ago had nothing but weird stories to tell about the building. There are certain constants that run through these stories over the years. I am going to try my best here to give an account of them without sounding crazy.
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WINDOWS
Windows - its as simple as that. That is where im choosing to start the story of my experiences, They have been a constant source of bizarre happenings here. The very house ive grown up in has had a history of unexplained noises and strange sounds, these being especially prominent around the houses windows frames over the years. These sounds still happen today. Popping and flapping noises occur briefly. At the time you hear them you automatically dismiss them as being impossible. They are to be likened to the beat of a birds wings, though no bird is in sight ,and they mostly occur at night, but not always. These noises alone could be thought of as strange, but are they just limited to the farm house ? Are they just a figment of my imagination ?
Worryingly they have also been heard at another neighboring house next door to the Georgian manor , the one my childhood friend used to live in whose parents ran a B & B . Guests often had disturbed nights sleep there, and would remark at the breakfast table next morning that they were certain they had heard the beat of wings outside their windows during the night. Having experienced this phenomena myself, I can only imagine how worrying this would have been if I was to sleep in an unfamiliar room and experience this. As a child ,at the time you can guess how uncanny these stories were, and little did I know I would years later as an adult experience them myself. Again these situations were denied by the adults. Well at least by my parents, but this only made them more fascinating. It was something we knew about despite it being forbidden. It was proof to us that this world was no so straight cut and mundane as it had previously seemed. I guess it was also an act of rebellion to re-tell the stories. But it wasnt just the stories, it was also an inhabitant of the house which filled us with fear...
How would you as a child re-act if you were told a witch lived next door ? Or rather a self proclaimed one ? Not only was I living next door to a spooky Georgian manor house with a reputation for ghosts, but we had this womans reputation to deal with also. Things used to get super real when she drank, often arriving at our kitchen window spitting curses, I remember being hurriedly rushed upstairs to bed if my parents even suspected she may make an appearance. From what I can re-call these events would occur especially on summer evenings. I have vague recollections of a woman shouting at our kitchen window, but nothing more. How my parents made sense of this I do not know, but like all good parents they shielded me and my sister from her outbursts.
The strange window related happenings also occurred in the Georgian manor as well. And this is where the story really takes off, and maybe even begins to take shape ? I dont know, but things certainly ramp up here, and this is a recent event, not a recollection from my childhood in the 70'. Anyone with a passing interest in this large Georgian manor house will no doubt also know all about the rumors of the property and surrounding dale being one of the sites that are claimed to been the inspiration behind Emily Bronte's famous gothic novel Wuthering Heights. Despite having known this for years I only recently got around to reading said novel. Whilst turning the pages I guess that I was naturally guilty of setting the scenes set in the house of Wuthering Heights as having taken place there.
And a certain window related scene stands out particularly to me.
At the beginning of the novel I received quite a shock, the character Mr Lockwood becomes stranded during a snow storm and is forced to spend a night at the pleasure of Heathcliffe or rather his surly dis-pleasure to be more accurate. After being given a sparse room and a bed near a window he drifts into a fevered sleep, and has a chilling dream. In the dream he is visited by the ghost Catherine clawing at the window as she tries to get inside. I often wonder where Emily garnered that idea. Did she experience strange noises at the manor house windows when she was rumored to have visited ? Maybe thats a stretch and a half to make. But the story im about to tell next is quite amazing and only happened a couple of years ago. I am seriously tempted to say she did indeed frequent the property and used an experience with these strange noises around the windows as an inspiration for this dream scene.
As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear.
There is a second more alarming reason that this dream scene may have been inspired by events here in the past.
It was in the mid 90's one September night when I heard something very disturbing. So disturbing I called on my parents to come outside to check it out as I could not believe the sound was as it was. A small child could be heard sobbing and it seemed to be coming from an area slightly up hill and to the side of this manor house and from an area overlooking our farm yard. As it was 11pm I was worried as to why a child should be crying outside. It was then that I noticed the sound of the sobs was amplified, and I could hear every intake of breath even though the crying did not sound in my immediate vicinity at the time. Could this ghostly sobbing have been the inspiration for the ghostly Catherine menacing Mr Lockwood ? Did Emily hear this or hear of it from another ? The pieces of a jigsaw are coming together, possibly ?
You see said manor house recently found its self at the center of a feature film. Said film this was about the life of Emily Bronte. Well, well that was a turn up for the books. I remember a summer spent watching filming going on just over out garden wall. Said assistant director when I spoke to her said she was not aware that the property had supposed or rumored connections to the novel, and she claimed the site was chosen after scouting it out, and all was purely coincidental. I find that fact a bit hard to swallow. However during filming I spoke to a security guard and he had a very interesting story to tell, and it was basically this...
This security guard spent his nights in a caravan outside the manor house. His job was to secure the building after filming when the day was done. Every night he shut all the windows and locked all the doors. He also closed the window shutters only to find to his annoyance that there was always one, the same one constantly that had apparently come open during the night, and the shutters were also thrown open. He was quite annoyed at this as it reflected badly upon him, and made him question whether someone was gaining access to the film set at night despite him being camped just outside. Im sure he took these occurrences personally, and accompanied with a noise that sounded like someone throwing gravel at his caravan most nights, no doubt his job seemed to be creeping into a spooky endeavor. I wonder where he is now, and just how much he knew his experience with the windows freaked me out, and how they tied in with the window scene in the novel ?
Can you see how this is all cross referencing ? A picture emerges. The windows noises in my own house, the windows flapping noises at the other house ( my childhood friends ) in the manor grounds, and the window oddities that happened in the Georgian manor house during filming. That Georgian manor house rumored to be the setting that inspired Wuthering Heights, that included that disturbing dream scene.
I often joke after these noises occur today around our windows that it is " Catherine " who is trying to get in. I even go so far as to say or ask myself can millions of people reading a novel project a physical effect to manifest around the site of a novel ? Could people reading really bring them to life ? At this point you are no doubt thinking that this is a rather manufactured tale of coincidence. But then something happened which blew my mind. Something totally unconnected with anything ive so far touched on.
There was this one Christmas. The one you probably want to forget. The one where the government cancelled our seasonal meetings as they fell foul of those made on the hoof Covid regulations. I remember the disbelief and anger that Christmas was basically cancelled. How could this happen ? Anyway the local carol service was now a no go, and i used to enjoy a Christmas eve carol service. However the people involved in this Christmas eve tradition service had a particularly inventive idea to air their singing of carols over Skype, so anyone who wanted to listen in could. It was one of those new ideas that sprang out of stupid Covid restrictions.
Where on earth am I going with this ? Well it was a while before something extremely strange occurred in this service, but when it did my jaw dropped. There came a moment of confusion when the sing along subtitles suddenly had an un-invited word in a sentence. This word being a " random " name that seemed to only cause a mild moment of vague annoyance among the singers, and nothing more. But to me the random appearance of the name " Catherine " astounded me ! Why of all the words that could have occurred did that name manifest in a songs lyric subtitles ?
You see I think this goes further than we think. There are some other happenings connected to that doomed love story that have occurred, some equally unlikely, but they involve other people I know and I cannot go into them here unfortunately.
I seem to enough evidence, though heavily made up of what I cannot print here to conclude a novel can manifest in real lives somewhat. The problem with telling this story is that there is so much more I cant say, but you can be sure that the above is full of bizarre circumstances at the very least. Some occurred during my childhood, and some stretch to this very day, and who knows how long they will continue into the future ?
