And Now for Something Completely Different
Joan Gurney (Appleton), 1938-51
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I have almost come to the end of stories from my life based on a country childhood and many backward glances to the influences of my schooldays at CCHS.
Psychologists tell us that our intellect is a combination of nature and nurture, and sociologists add that our final personality is dependent on all the people that we have met and all the events, major or minor, which we have lived through in our early lives. Both of these hypotheses may explain why I have so often felt compelled to write purely for pleasure, about such things as wildlife, the countryside, friendships, travel and swimming. But looking through my early school exercise books recently (hoarding is another of my inherited traits, or some say obsessions) how did I become so interested in the supernatural , ghosts, and the occult to write essays and compositions about them in my later schooldays? No doubt, we pupils were given composition titles on which to complete our thoughts and demonstrate our knowledge of English, sentence analysis and punctuation. I remember that I was no good at writing about abstract subjects – Happiness, Colour, Sounds – and even Clouds ended up as a meteorological report with nothing remotely creative or imaginative about it.
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I can only surmise that the story of the ghost which apparently haunted the top floor of Grey Friars and which was relayed to me on my arrival in the Preparatory Department in 1938, had a subliminal effect on my imagination. The long, narrow, dark and gloomy top corridor (right) of the building, particularly the middle section, marked P, on the plan (below) was not one of the building’s most attractive features. This is the point where the original 1755 house and the later 1904 west wing are united with the 1780’s garden room below.
I have almost come to the end of stories from my life based on a country childhood and many backward glances to the influences of my schooldays at CCHS. Psychologists tell us that our intellect is a combination of nature and nurture, and sociologists add that our final personality is dependent on all the people that we have met and all the events, major or minor, which we have lived through in our early lives. Both of these hypotheses may explain why I have so often felt compelled to write purely for pleasure, about such things as wildlife, the countryside, friendships, travel and swimming. But looking through my early school exercise books recently (hoarding is another of my inherited traits, or some say obsessions) how did I become so interested in the supernatural , ghosts, and the occult to write essays and compositions about them in my later schooldays? No doubt, we pupils were given composition titles on which to complete our thoughts and demonstrate our knowledge of English, sentence analysis and punctuation. I remember that I was no good at writing about abstract subjects – Happiness, Colour, Sounds – and even Clouds ended up as a meteorological report, with nothing remotely creative or imaginative about it.
Here, the original furniture hoist (right) conjured up in my imagination an association with the hanging of witches in times gone by. I need not have blamed my exaggerated senses because this ghost story has been added to and enhanced over the years. After CCHS had vacated the
building in 1957, and other schools used it as temporary accommodation, it is recorded that a ventilation door into a wall cavity in this area often mysteriously blew open (or was manipulated by an unseen hand) in times of storms, and even later, when the Adult Education Centre was established, the caretaker’s dog would never accompany him on his top floor nightly security round because of an “unseen presence!”
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These ghost stories and tales of the supernatural kept me entertained during the 1940s and the war years. It was within these years that I wrote a piece called “An interview with the devil” where, during a dream which I had after attending a pantomime, I descended into hell and met the devil. It is of great interest to me today because, in the dream, several events of that decade were replicated, and it became an important record of social history in the real world. There was a National Health Service in the underworld, and in order to enter Hell and the Fiery Furnace, I had to acquire my own set of horns and a spiky tail! These were rationed (as was food in the war years) and coupons had to be torn out of my ration book as they were handed over. There were queues for everything, and priority was given to those who had completed the most evil deeds, and so went to the front of the queue. There must have been some controversy in the real world at the time over opticians’ failure to deliver horn-rimmed spectacles, because they got straight in, as did anybody who came from Colchester! What had they done, I wondered?
At this point in the story of my dream, the writing was beginning to fade because I was obviously recording it with a ‘dip in the ink’ pen and it needed replenishing from the ceramic inkwell (left) slotted into my desk top. I never knew the answer and my dream suddenly ended. It had been a comedy with gruesome details!
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My English teacher (either Miss Blunt or Miss RL Phillips, to distinguish her from Miss ME Phillips who taught Maths) did not like the story very much, although she gave me a B+ and did write ‘Quite Good’ at the end. I gave her more satisfaction when I wrote (still with tongue in cheek) “On learning to ride a pony” for which she said “I enjoyed this”.
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Not content with creating our own fantasy world on paper, with four CCHS friends I decided to explore the supernatural world a little further. We arranged a bicycle trip to Borley Rectory which was not far from Colchester, and which had been in the news as one of the most haunted houses in the country. Anticipation was high, but we were so disappointed that nothing spectacular happened except for a farm worker, believing that we were looking for something unusual to occur, lobbed a potato at us over the hedge!
The ultimate challenge in ghost story writing came in the late 1940s when my French teacher at the time (who I believe was Miss Nichols) asked us not only to write a ghost story in French, but to construct it in the style of a Mediaeval Puzzle Book. This meant including, as the story unfolded, miniature illustrations (below) within the text. This pleased me no end, because art was my favourite subject. Here I reproduce it, knowing that all those learned alumnae, helped by the small drawings, will be able to translate it with ease!
I left school at CCHS in 1951 to become a student at university and teacher training college thinking that tales, ghosts and the underworld were well behind me. Towards the end of this four year period I became
involved with a small drama group and suddenly found myself in a production where I was understudy to Mephistopheles, and although I never had to stand-in for the
main character, I was once more back in the world of horns, tails and spikey fingernails, and enjoyed assisting with the facial make-up (above right).
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Fifty-five years passed, and all thoughts of ghosts and the supernatural vanished and then a ghost of a very different kind entered my life.
I have always loved owls. Screeching barn owls, snoring little owls and hooting tawny owls, all inhabit or visit my meadow and orchard, and I hear their calls, but my favourite is the barn owl. Often as I drove home in the dark after my evening's work in Colchester, as soon as I entered the narrow lanes of Gt Bromley, my headlights would pick out a barn owl overhead, silently searching the grass verges for small rodents.
On another occasion, driving home at dusk from London, with my late husband, Gerald, at the wheel, as we entered Mary Lane North, from the A120, I glimpsed a young barn own sitting on a post beside the road. “Look out,” I shouted. Confused and dazzled by the combination of noise, movement and car lights, it took off suddenly, hitting the windscreen hard. We stopped and I got out expecting to see a stunned bird lying in the road. But it had, apparently, flown away unharmed, leaving a tiny fragment of creamy-white feather stuck to the glass as evidence of its collision.
My next exciting owl encounter was yet to come, in February 2010, but this time the bird left no clue to its identity – barn and tawny owls are similar in size. Read on for the finale!
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Small birds, such as chaffinches and blackbirds, sometimes fly into windows where the glass appears to be an open space. The only indication of the collision is the sound of thud and, sadly, often a corpse on the ground below. Pigeons usually survive, but leave an intricate and eerie ‘ghost’ mark caused by the fine resinous and insulating powder in their feathers sticking to the glass. Nocturnal strikes by owls, as they fly silently searching for prey, are the most interesting. They are, perhaps mistakenly lured by reflections.
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This very unusual ‘ghost’ (left) on the rear window of my husband’s car, greeted me one morning in early February, after a cold clear night which had given a light dusting of snow. The impact must have occurred at the exact moment when the temperature dropped to freeing point, because the outline is remarkably sharp, and there is no disturbance of snow beyond the periphery of the image.
Although I would hope to see a daytime small bird ‘ghost’ on a window sometime soon, the misty faint image is not easy to photograph, but a nocturnal owl ‘ghost’ as clear as this one on frosted snowy glass is very rare, and I cannot hope to see it eve again. It is my most memorable ‘ghost’ experience.
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