Chapter 3
The Mystery Deepens
1950
THE SEANCE ROOM
1951
THE BIG FOOT PRINT
ALDINE HOUSE
1952
DOMINION OF DEATH
DOPPELGÄNGER
PEEL CASTLE
ST DUNSTAN'S MONKS
1954 - 1957
TUNNELS AND GRAVES
1958
CAPESTHORNE HALL
1959
HILL HOUSE
1952
29
YEARS
ST DUNSTAN’S MONKS
“The day after I met Sax for the first time I heard about a haunted church, where the rector and others were reported to encounter regularly columns of ghostly figures!”
“During the Middle Ages a chapter of St Bartholomew’s the Great existed here, and in those days monks would in all probability have walked where the new church of St Dunstan’s now stands.”
St Dunstan's East Acton, London
East Acton, London
“The Rector told me he soon realized there was something very strange about the church…”
“…and he soon saw the ghost monks that a former curate, the Rev. Philip Bousted, had seen many times in the 1930s...”
“ ‘There is no doubt’, he told me,
‘that on many evenings up to a dozen monks can be seen walking in procession up the central aisle and into the chancel of St Dunstan’s…’ ”
“When seen from the corner of the eye they were quite clear, I was told, but they seemed to disappear when looked at directly…”
A reporter named Kenneth Mason from The Daily Sketch learned of these sightings.
“When he heard about the procession, he thought he would visit the church and see for himself,
and perhaps find a story.”
“It was a cold and wet November evening…”
“…he reached the deserted church and sat down in a pew on the left-hand side of the nave to keep watch,
and unlike so many who watch for ghosts, he saw them...”
“After a time he dozed, but suddenly he found himself wide awake, and there, walking slowly towards him, he saw a procession of six or eight hooded figures, their heads bowed, moving silently up the aisle towards the altar…”
‘Slowly they came towards me…’
‘I took my courage and, facing them, I barred their way, then I quickly had to turn and look back at them, they had passed right through me!’
“The vicar came to believe that he was able to converse with one of the ghost monks…”
“…but after he had published an article in his parish magazine
which he claimed was dictated to him by this monk,
he became distressed by the resulting publicity…”
“I subsequently discovered that Harry Price knew about the ghost monks and had collected many reports over the years.
He came to the conclusion that the phenomena occurred in four-year cycles, but my investigations did not bear out this interesting theory.”
“Although there is no doubt that psychic happenings were reported from the church over a period exceeding forty years.”
