Churches in England are often portrayed as quaint, picturesque centres of their community. But given they’re also often one of the oldest buildings in a town or village, it’s hardly surprising that we’d have so many tales of haunted churches too.
Some of these tales immortalise previous parishioners, but more usually, the tales commemorate dark deeds or criminal activity. Why not? Just look at the brutal murder of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. And then there’s the widespread desecration of churches during the Reformation and the tumultuous period afterwards.
In this post, we’ll explore some of the tales behind England’s haunted churches, including phantoms from the future, ghostly birds, spectral organ music, and lights in the churchyard…
Visions of the Future
We’ll start with a crossover with the St Mark’s Eve divination we saw last week. This involved people sitting in the church porch on 24 April between 11 pm and 1 am to see a procession of those who would die the following year.
A new vicar arrived in Derwent Woodlands in Derbyshire, and was none too pleased to discover the tradition of the Sermon for the Dead. This involved preaching a sermon in the empty church on the last Sunday in December at midnight. According to the tradition, all those who would die in the following year would appear as wraiths to hear the sermon.
This did not sit well with the vicar, and he refused to preach the sermon. He refused right up until the point he had to give it…and then he found himself giving the sermon anyway. To his horror, he spotted himself among the spectres listening quietly from the gallery. True to the story, the vicar died within the year (Westwood 2005: 159).
A similar tale from Walton-le-Dale in Lancashire saw a new vicar arrive in the village to preach at St Leonard’s. Some believed his interests ran a little too close to the Dark Arts for their liking, and he befriended the village astrologer. The vicar and the astrologer kept a vigil in the church porch, only for the vicar to see himself among the ghostly procession. Later that year, he caught a fever from a parishioner and died.
People speculated that the story was linked with Edward Kelley, the ‘medium’ who worked with Dr John Dee. He apparently experimented with necromancy in the area to ascertain when a specific person would die. Some say Dee was actually present during the rite at St Leonard’s. Others find this connection irrelevant due to the commonality of vigil stories (Westwood 2005: 410).
Spectral Music
St Mary’s church in Avenbury, Herefordshire, was reputed to be haunted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. People heard organ music when the church should have been empty. One married couple was coming home in the snow on Christmas Day in the 1880s and decided to take shelter in the porch. They heard “extremely happy, joyous human sounds” from inside the church, though when they tried the church door, it was locked, and the church itself was in darkness. The woman who wrote to the vicar to tell him the story stressed how uplifting she’d found the experience, which seems at odds with the usual terror associated with ghost stories (Archer-Shepherd 1919: 3).
It seemed that the church’s organist was a good and popular man in the village. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for his brother, who continually leeched off the organist.
One night, the brothers came to blows on a bridge, and the bad brother killed the good one. After that, people heard the organ played in the empty church. The vicar apparently did an exorcism on the bridge at the time the murder happened. While the music continued, it took on a less painful tone (Westwood 2005: 318).
Unfortunately, the church closed in 1931 and is nothing more than a ruin now.
Except this tale gets even more interesting.
In 1919, the vicar, E. H. Archer-Shepherd, wrote a letter to the Bromyard News to categorically deny laying any ghosts to rest. As he wrote, “I believe neither in ghostly manifestations, nor in the efficacy of any number of lighted candles to lay a ghost” (1919: 3).
The vicar refused to believe that a disembodied spirit could muster the strength required to play an organ. He did admit that many people had heard the phantom organ music, but he believed that “some telepathic, or auto-suggestive, or atmospheric, or other natural cause may have acted on our auditory nerves, setting up sensations which were transmuted by the brain into external sounds” (1919: 3).
Another theory was that a man named Nicholas Vaughn burned down the palace of the Bishop of Hereford. According to this legend, Vaughn haunted the church, not an organist—though this version doesn’t explain the organ music (Western Times 1919: 3). So who knows what was going on in Avenbury?
The Ghost of Dick Whittington?
St James Garlickhythe stands on London’s Garlick Hill. According to legend, a grey figure who crosses its hands over its chest haunts the church. The spectre stands in the corner, staring at the altar. The legend has only existed for 150 years or so, though there is potentially an explanation for this.
The figure is known as ‘Jimmy Garlick’ and is linked to a naturally mummified corpse found in 1830 during excavation work (St James Garlickhythe 2022). The Great Fire gutted the building, destroying the records, so there’s no way to know who the corpse might be. It seems apt that the legend only dates to the discovery of the corpse (Westwood 2005: 465). That said, some felt that the ghost only began to haunt the church in protest at the mummy being put on display (St James Garlickhythe 2022). People paid to see it!
Ethan Doyle White [CC BY-SA 4.0]
Various theories abound as to who the figure is, including Dick Whittington. The sightings of a phantom cat in the church lend weight to this theory. When Mummy Autopsy examined Jimmy in 2004, they think he died between 1641 and 1801, and had osteoarthritis, making it likely he was an older man (St James Garlickhythe 2022).
A glass case once held the mummy but a bomb shattered the glass during an air raid in 1942 (Westwood 2005: 466). According to one legend, locals saw a shrouded man in the church before any air raids. In one raid, a fireman dashed in to rescue the man who refused to leave the church…before he faded from sight (St James Garlickhythe 2022).
Now the mummy lies in storage in the tower (Westwood 2005: 466).
Ghosts Or General Mischief?
There’s always the possibility that tales of ghosts can mask other things—look at the tales of phantom coaches that some believed were intended to hide the activities of smugglers.
Churches weren’t immune. People regularly reported seeing ghosts in the churchyard of St James’ Church in Lower Gornal in Staffordshire. According to the legend, in 1879, a would-be assassin badly injured the Revd. J. Y. Rooker on 8 August. It seemed the assassin, Charles Hartland, had twice been brought before Rooker in his role as a magistrate and twice been convicted. Hartland shot Rooker in the ear, neck, and mouth, yet Rooker somehow survived (Derby Daily Telegraph 1879: 3).
Some people claimed they’d seen Hartland lurking in the churchyard, while others said they’d seen figures walking in the field between the vicarage and churchyard. The police investigated but could find no evidence of mischief (Westwood 2005: 669).
Eventually, people refused to go near the churchyard after dark. Other locals pledged to guard the vicar and held vigils outside his house. This led to several skirmishes between locals who often didn’t or couldn’t recognise one another in the dark.
No one is entirely sure if this was a hoax that went badly wrong. Or was it a deliberate persecution of the vicar? The villagers ultimately blamed ghosts for it all. So much so that one woman suggested an exorcism. She sought permission to cut a 4″ square of turf from a particular grave. According to her, this grave belonged to a young man whose guilty conscience meant he couldn’t rest easily in his grave. She claimed that the turf would need to be laid under the communion table for four days to lay all the ghosts to rest. Sadly, there is no record as to whether they tried this (Westwood 2005: 672).
Haunted Vaults
Elsewhere, the criminals themselves could become ghosts pestering those trying to use the church. In 1749, the locals became convinced that the vaults beneath St Martin’s Church in West Drayton, Buckinghamshire, were haunted. People reported hearing strange noises and knockings. A handful of brave people even peered through a ventilation grate into one of the vaults and spotted a raven perched on a coffin.
Others saw the raven in the church itself, where it was chased by a group of men who found it in the rafters. They beat it so badly that they broke one of its wings, but it apparently vanished before them. People continued to see it soon after, though it always vanished before anyone could grab it (Westwood 2005: 51).
People still spoke about it in 1883, when people reported hearing phantom flutterings in the church. They believed the raven to be the spirit of a murderer who committed suicide, but who was buried in consecrated ground, rather than at the crossroads as customs dictated. Another theory explored the idea that a murderer and their victim had been buried side-by-side in the vault. Such close proximity meant their spirits couldn’t rest, and many believed the raven to be the soul of the murderer.
The raven was usually seen on Fridays, which was considered to be a particularly unlucky day.
Crime Doesn’t Pay
Following 1853’s cholera epidemic in Newcastle upon Tyne, the authorities banned burials in the parish churchyards. This was a problem for John Alderson, the beadle at All Saints church. He couldn’t make money if he didn’t have graves to dig. So he came up with a plan. He would open existing graves, steal the lead from the coffins, and sell it on (Histon 2000: 31).
It seemed like genius. Those who lived in nearby Silver Street could see his lantern bobbing around in the darkness. Locals assumed supernatural shenanigans were afoot and steered clear.
Eventually, the plan came to a screeching halt. Someone ordered an investigation and the subsequent watch caught Alderson red-handed.
In July 1854, the authorities found Alderson guilty of opening graves and stealing the lead from the coffins. According to the Newcastle Guardian, Alderson broke open “no less than five vaults”, reporting that “nine leaden coffins enclosing shells in which dead bodies were deposited had been forcibly removed” (1854: 4).
The newspaper explained that Alderson sold the lead “for whatever could be procured for it” (1854: 4). This report also goes to great pains to explain the “ghastly spectacle” presented by the opened coffins, and the “deadly stench” coming from the vaults, making the crime all the more heinous.
Alderson, along with his wife and mother, faced 18 months imprisonment. His bell-ringer and accomplice, Hewison Marshall, received 12 months. Alderson became known as “Jack, the bad Beadle”.
Some say you can still see his lantern bobbing around in the darkness of the churchyard…
What do we make of these haunted churches?
As we found with pubs a few weeks ago, old gathering places seem to continue to gather legends over time. Perhaps the sites that see the most human activity find themselves imprinted with the influence of those that used them.
Besides, the link between churches and burial places is clear to see, with people interred within the church or buried close by outside. It’s more likely spectres haunt where they’d lived, rather than their burial place. Yet it’s understandable to imagine seeing phantoms when surrounded by the dead. There is a juxtaposition between holy space and the return of the dead.
A lot of these stories appear in the 19th century, so newspapers run them alongside other stories. Some of them appear on the church’s own website. As we remember the stories, so we remember the ghosts that star in them.
Do you know about any haunted churches near you?
References
Archer-Shepherd, E. H. (1919), ‘Letters to the Editor: ‘The Avenbury Ghost’.’, The Bromyard News & Record, 18 September, p. 3.
Derby Daily Telegraph (1879), ‘The Attempted Murder of a Staffordshire Vicar’, Derby Daily Telegraph, 7 November, p. 3.
Histon, Vanessa (2000), Nightmare on Grey Street: Newcastle’s Darker Side, Newcastle upon Tyne: Tyne Bridge Publishing.
Newcastle Guardian (1854), ‘Robberies of graves in Newcastle’, Newcastle Guardian, 15 July, p. 4.
St James Garlickhythe (2022), ‘Jimmy Garlick’, St James Garlickhythe, https://www.stjamesgarlickhythe.org/jimmygarlick.
Western Times (1919), ‘Unseen Organist at a Hereford Church’, Western Times, 9 September, p. 3.
Westwood, Jennifer and Simpson, Jacqueline (2005), The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, London: Penguin.
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