I was looking through a few of my old videos on my phone. They were all of my animals….of course! I remember when Cagney and Lacey were kittens they loved watching football and playing on iPad games. Just like kids I guess.
Spooky North Yorkshire Coast
I’m walking through the house with a glass of wine in hand….it is Sunday afternoon what else could you possibly drink after a Sunday dinner??
It is 16:30 and the light is fading fast as I walk through the main corridor which was in fact a cattle corridor, I would say up until a few decades ago but my Vinnie and Rambo both came through that corridor to their place of residence in my garden/woodland in June, I think to myself about the history of the house and the area in general. The house and indeed the local area catapults you to another time period in which superstition and spooky occurrences were the norm.
One of the most famous gothic horror stories of all time, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was set in Whitby only 12 miles from this house. Dracula arrived in Whitby in the form of a black dog onboard a ship called the Demeter, which contained mould filled wooden boxes and had been piloted by a dead man lashed to the wheel……This guy knows how to arrive!
“But, strangest of all, the very instant the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck from below,as if shot up by the concussion, and running forward, jumped from the bow on the sand. Making straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard hangs over the laneway to the East Pier so steeply that some of the flat tombstones, thruffsteans or through-stones, as they call them in Whitby vernacular, actually project over where the sustaining cliff has fallen away, it disappeared in the darkness, which seemed intensified just beyond the focus of the searchlight”. (Dracula, chapter 7)
Whitby Abbey which is the setting of Dracula’s arrival onto British shores has inspired many ghost stories. There is also local legend that a phantom coach pulled by six black horses appears the night after the death of a fisherman in the town. The phantom coach allegedly picks up ghostly mourners along the route to the abbey. The otherworldly mourners would stop at the church and circle the grave of the fisherman three times. They would then again enter the ghostly coach, which would be driven at speed over the edge of the cliff.
It’s easy to see why Whitby and the Abbey have featured so heavily as it oozes atmospheric gothic appeal. The area is quite simply stunning.
We know Dracula came to shore in the form of a black dog. However, before Dracula was written legends were abound across the country of tales of demon dogs. My local area also has its fair share of black dog legends. It may in fact be that Bram Stoker was inspired by the local legends whilst staying in Whitby writing Dracula.
A popular tale in this area revolves around a sighting of large black demon dog appearing along the cliff side of Kettleness, which is near to Whitby. However, this event certainly didn’t inspire Stoker as it happened fairly recently in historical terms. This event is said to have occurred in the 1950s and had been witnessed by a schoolmaster and two of his friends. The schoolmaster contacted The Reverend Dr Donald Omand, a leading exorcist at the time. This is an extract taken from a book written about the life of the Doctor.
“On visiting Kettleness they [the schoolmaster and two friends] all experienced a wave of terror when, looking over the shore to the misty sea, they had seen a huge hound—so large it could not be mortal appear out of thin air. Silent with shock they watched it move towards them before disappearing as silently and mysteriously as it had come. All three were left with such a strong sense of evil that the schoolmaster believed it was a case desperately in need of exorcism”. (Alexander, M. (1978).To anger the Devil: Exorcist extraordinary The Reverend Dr Donald Omand . Suffolk: Neville Spearman) p48.
The Reverend was apparently very keen to meet up with the schoolmaster and attempt to exorcise the beast. As they walked along Kettleness the Reverend is alleged to have said:
“All we need now is for Dracula to come bounding ashore in the form of a great black dog,” ‘muttered Donald with a smile. But the smile froze as his companion suddenly gripped him by the arm…
‘What we saw looked like a huge black hound, but bigger than anymember of the canine species, known to man. It was moving straight in our direction and the schoolmaster’s nerve gave way completely. He rushed back to the car.‘Uncorking the bottle [of Holy Water] which I was carrying, I commanded the spectre as follows: “Be gone in the name of the LordJesus Christ. Be gone to the place appointed for you, there to remain for ever. Be gone in the Name of Christ.” ‘As I spoke the last words, I splashed Holy Water in the direction of the apparition, and the latter disappeared as suddenly as it had materialised. Then I exorcised all the ground which the spectre had covered and a great heaviness went out of the atmosphere. The menace of Kettleness was ended’. Alexander, pp 49-50
There are many more ghostly and eerie incidents around this coastline and I will touch upon these in further posts.
Reference: https://www.academia.edu/370059/The_Black_Dog_of_Whitby_and_
https://littlehistorydotblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/the-black-dog-of-kettleness/
I hope you’ve enjoyed these posts so far. Please leave me message below if you have enjoyed the posts or think I could improve. Also please feel free to email me. Thanks Rach
The General
The General keeps law and order in the Woodland. She’s a tough battle axe of a hen. She once pecked me in the eye because I was having an anxiety attack one day. I went outside not feeling very well….I think everyone has those days at some point, when you feel detached from reality and slightly on edge. As I bent down to put food in the hen feeder, General suddenly appeared and pecked me full force in the eye. Although it was painful and I couldn’t see properly for a few days, it had done the trick and immediately snapped me out of the anxiety attack. If General could speak English I’m sure she would have said something on the lines of “I’ll give you something to cry about loser”. Although I don’t recommend being pecked in the eye as a form of anxiety therapy…I do think Dr General’s medicine did the trick that day.
The General came to me two years ago after being rescued along with hundreds of other hens from a battery farm by Whitby Wildlife Sanctuary. You’ll find as time goes on and I blab on some more that a large amount of my animals came from the sanctuary. The sanctuary never turns an animal away no matter whether mouse, pigeon or fox.
The General along with the other girls Houdini, Pip, Honey, Clover, Junior, BoBo and Charlie couldn’t believe their luck when they moved from my previous middle sized back garden to the woodland. They are thoroughly enjoying the Autumn/ winter leaves and all the bugs they can eat.
The girls lay very well, General stopped a couple of months ago as she has gone through the henopause. I don’t mind as I see eggs as a bonus only. I love just having my girls around. Although the eggs are great for fried egg sandwiches most mornings and make tasty frittatas and Yorkshire puddings. Honestly I believe you can taste the difference in the eggs when the hen is well looked after and loved.
The Woodland
A large part of my garden is a woodland area. It’s the main reason I purchased the property. I wanted space for my animals.
The woodland area is on levels and has a very old stone pig sty/ outbuilding. The pig sty is quite strange…and that’s coming from someone who is quite strange!
Inside the sty was a small wooden table and chair, because pigs today have excellent etiquette and obviously eat at a table. At the back there appears to be an old stone stove. But I was most intrigued by a wooden leg complete with iron foot..in fact two of them…..Someone had been very unlucky!
The pig sty is pitch black inside no matter what the weather or time of day. I expect some disembodied pirate without legs jumping out at me every time I go in. Vinnie and Rambo love it though.
The sty was covered in brambles when we arrived. Mally cut it all back and revealed an even more unusual item on the exterior wall of the sty…..yes even more unusual than two iron legs. An old style rusted possibly brass United Kingdom crest….just seemed strange on a pig sty in the middle of a back garden woodland. There also appeared to have been power going to the sty at some point in the past. The cables looked to be from the 1930/40s. Maybe it had been used as an air raid shelter during the war.
Vinnie and Rambo use the sty as shelter. I actually have a nice wooden playhouse for them but they prefer the sty. It’s actually quite cosy with hay and straw making a soft floor and bedding for the lads. A few paintings and a lazy boy chair and the lads will be in heaven.
Cromwell House part II
Aside from the creepy haunted house vibe, the house is actually snug and cottage like. I may have upset the seller slightly when I said the place smelt like an old smugglers pub…the weird thing is I thought that was a compliment! Some days you can really smell the soot falling down from the chimney. I’ll have to get the chimney sweep out and I wouldn’t mind Mary Poppins following him as my house is a tip and some help with pet care would be a bonus!
Things are coming along but still a long way to go. Talking about spooky earlier, I thought the dressing room which is between the front and back bedrooms was quite unsettling. I think it was the wallpaper and the scythe pattern on it. Let’s be honest, these things combined with my sinister looking rams who lurk menacingly in the woodland are a great setting for a horror movie.
It just seems very apt moving into such a place during a plague.
Honestly the house is very cosy with its four fireplaces…..as I’m writing this I am getting constant notifications on my phone. My wildlife camera is on fire with the local hedgehogs chowing down on their nightly feed.
The hedgehog video is a good place to say that next I will be focusing on the garden and woodland. There were some very strange finds in that woodland. I’ll discuss that with you tomorrow.
Cromwell House
Today I’m going to tell you about the house I moved into in June. Apparently it was built around 1760ish and was originally a farmhouse. I’ve been told by local folk that the house has always been known as Cromwell House, some say because Oliver Cromwell once stayed at the house. However, unfortunately for Cromwell he’d already been hung, drawn and quartered in 1658. So that clearly wasn’t the reason it was called Cromwell House. I did some research and came to the conclusion that Cromwell House was in fact the name given to Catholic safe houses whilst they were being heavily persecuted during this time period. Cromwell was extremely anti catholic and by giving the house that name, the catholic’s inside were effectively saying to the outside world that this house was anti catholic and sided with Cromwell. Pretty good, I guess it would be on a par with a Vegan calling their restaurant the slaughter house. Throw the authorities right of the scent!
So I gathered that the house had been a secret worship site for catholics. The house itself does show signs of this. A beautiful stained glass window adorns the stairway and we have found several Virgin Mary statues in the undergrowth outside.
The house has been kept as original as possible throughout the decades and for that I am truly grateful. I felt as though I had stepped back in time when I first viewed the property. That excitement has not diminished even with the roof having several holes in it! My aim is to keep everything as original as possible.
The kitchen/ dining area has quite an interesting piece on display. A stone pillar from nearby Handale Abbey is in use to keep the ceiling from falling in. The Abbey was destroyed during the reformation under that jolly pleasant fellow Henry VIII. The stonework left was taken by local farmers throughout the centuries that followed and used in their own building work. That’s why I have a monastic pillar in my kitchen!
The attic is rather interesting and I was pretty much positive it was haunted. A few weeks ago I was on my own in the house, which isn’t uncommon as Mally works night shifts. At around 3am I was awoken by the sound of snoring. There was only me in the house. Cagney and Lacey my two black cats were asleep on the bed. I was concerned that this was some ghostly apparition getting some downtime in either the back bedroom or the attic. Cagney and Lacey didn’t seem interested and as everyone knows cats sense these things…don’t they? That’s what telly says anyway.
I realised I urgently needed the loo. All I could hear was very loud snoring. I looked at my phone to see when sunrise was…ghosts always go back when the sun goes up according to Most Haunted. Sunrise was due around 6am. I could lay there for another three hours or just bite the bullet and investigate. I quickly switched all the lights on and bolted for the bathroom. From the bathroom I could still hear the snoring. I was pretty alarmed by this stage. But hey I would have a great story to tell if I saw something. I slowly and slightly trembling walked towards the back bedroom were it appeared the noise was coming from. I picked up little Lacey cat as protection against the underworld and walked in. To my relief it appeared that the noise was coming from the boiler. The pressure had dropped and it was the water trying to circulate that was making a strange snoring noise. Case closed…whether it was the boiler or not I had satisfied myself that that was the case!
ELVIS is ALIVE
My title is a bit of a giveaway. But before I go into too much detail of the circumstances of his capture, I will continue from where we left off…
It was a Saturday night when I received that phone call and I was a little worse for wear. Due to having had a few glasses of vino and Mally having had several pints. I was unconvinced it was Elvis but it was a lead and I needed to act on it. I phoned my sister who in turn sent her husband Matty to pick us up and drive us to the address. I took a cage and blanket in the hope that it was in fact elvis. The lady who had spotted Elvis was out at the bingo and her neighbour whose garden Elvis was reportedly in had no idea we were coming.
It came as something of a shock to the gentleman who opened the door to see two drunken idiots stood there. I crazily told him my elvis was spotted in his back garden. He didn’t look pleased and I’m sure he thought it some kind of scam especially at nearly ten in the evening. Rather than shut the door on us he called to his elderly father and asked had he seen any quails in the garden. The elderly gentleman said that he was happy for us to look in the garden…elderly people are too trusting some times, I certainly wouldn’t have allowed me in!
We approached the back garden and immediately I saw Elvis in a comprising position along with his little quail girlfriend (The dirty boy) But luckily as he was too engrossed in his…erm..extra curricular activity he didn’t notice us throwing a sheet over him. I hurriedly showed the two quail to the residents. There was a sigh of relief and smile from both as they realised luckily it wasn’t a scam and we weren’t burglars looking to ransack their home.
Elvis was alive and well along with his girlfriend. He had one hell of a story to tell. Unfortunately not speaking quail I couldn’t understand a word of it.
Elvis has left the building
Vinnie and Rambo had their day out in the pub beer garden. They obviously enjoyed it so much they decided to open the latch on the quail enclosure. This allowed the quails to have a jolly good jaunt as well. (I knew the rams were responsible and had somehow managed to lift the latch, as incriminating black wool was found stuck to the latch itself) Out of eleven quails, nine were missing!
Word was put out across the whole of the town by my neighbours. There were several sightings throughout the next ten days. A quail turned up at my neighbour’s door banging to be let in. Two others were found walking into the pub…I sense a joke about quails and rams going into a bar….I received a phone call from my neighbour Lou who was away on holiday, but somehow had managed to find out another of my quail had been found…spinning some DJ decks after flying in through an open window a few streets away. All my quail apart from two had now been found. My beautiful Californian quail Elvis and his little girlfriend were still missing. Elvis it seemed had well and truly left the building. I was devastated.
Days passed and I just hoped Elvis was flying amongst the trees living his best life. I spent night after night playing a quail song recording I found on YouTube, in the hope it would encourage Elvis to come home. In hindsight that quail could have been saying anything on that recording. He could well have been telling Elvis to do one for all I know!
Suddenly late one evening I received a phone call. It was Lou, Wendy a friend of a friend who was now on the way out to bingo had spotted Elvis in her neighbour’s back garden….was this Elvis????
The Great Escape
July was a hectic month with regards the animals. The rams decided that they didn’t like my garden and acre of woodland anymore. They peered over the garden fence and spied a pub beer garden. Yes! I live next door to a pub!
The rams thought they’d go for a pint of Black Sheep and managed to throw themselves over the garden wall and land on the beer garden floor. Luckily an eagle eyed neighbour Lou saw the rams pottering around the closed beer garden. She thought that was odd as I’d told her both rams were tee total. A few phone calls later and the landlord had opened the beer garden gates and I was chasing Vinnie and Rambo around the beer garden. My sister had come to lend a hand but let’s just say the horns on the rams were a little off putting to those in the nearby ramming vicinity. Eventually the naughty boys were caught and placed back in the garden. The fence was ram proofed and much to the relief of the landlord there have been no further requests for a pint of black sheep. Probably because the pub doesn’t sell it…. it’s a Sam Smith’s pub.
Meet the gang
Although I’ve already started with the blog and given an extremely brief overview of how it began…..I thought it would be nice for you to meet the wayward posse.
In the country not in the country 