Part 3: (True Ghost Story) The Famous Ghost That Came To Visit and Never Left
Photo courtesy of Jan Mallander from Pixabay
“I like to say I believe in ghosts so I don’t get haunted by one.”
- Ella Henderson
Having communicated with spirits since I was a child, I was used to being contacted by someone on the Other Side but never like this.
On the third day after moving into a 500-year-old stone cottage, I met our resident ghost. In another story, I described the “in your face” incidents that sent chills up and down my spine (the link to that story is at the bottom of this page). Let’s just say there was no denying her presence.
And it was clear that she wasn’t going anywhere.
One thing that struck me as odd was that whenever I tried to tune in and connect with her, I could never get a sense of what her hair or face looked like. I wondered if it was just that she didn’t want to show me for some reason. This seemed contradictory to her being such a strong presence and so eager for me to know she was there.
But heck, it’s not like she slipped me the Ghost Handbook.
After moving in, my (now former) husband and I were in the process of restoring the cottage to something more like how it might have looked in days gone by. During those first few weeks, we smashed up the plaster in the parlour and restored the original stone walls. We uncovered original quarry tile flooring downstairs, and massive oak planks upstairs.
Being an old cottage, there was only one small window in each room. We’d had the parlour completely rewired on moving in to allow for more light fixtures. Good thing, too. We discovered old wiring that had been dangerous, which led to rewiring most of the house.
The list of jobs both big and small was long and we had loads of fun making the cottage our own.
The kitchen was loaded with furniture and other items, having become a storage space while we attended to the dusty restorations in the parlour and sitting room. It was unusable, except for a skinny path to a box of dishes, the sink, and the fridge.
For days, we had been living on sandwiches, cold food, takeaways, and hearty meals across the lane at the Axe and Compass pub. The cooker was stuffed in a corner behind the table, chairs, and other items stashed on and around them. To be honest, I was quite happy to have had an excuse not to cook for a while.
Late one night, my husband and I were sitting by the fire in the parlour having some wine and surveying all we had accomplished in that room so far. It was around midnight when we heard an unfamiliar beeping sound. We had only lived there a few weeks and had no idea what it might be.
Following the sound, we discovered that it was coming from the back corner of the kitchen, behind the furniture and other “stuff” that we’d stashed in there. After some heaving and rearranging of things, my husband squeezed through and discovered that it was the cooker timer.
But no one had been near the cooker in a couple of weeks. It had been completely inaccessible the whole time.
“Could it have been set accidentally?” I asked.
After he fiddled around with it for some time, we discovered that it was impossible. In part because it took two hands (or awkwardly trying to use two fingers on one hand) and in part because of the location of those buttons.
Not finding any electrical or mechanical reason for the timer to have gone off, we were a little creeped out and wondering if it was our silent resident. It’s one thing to know you have a ghost in your house; it’s another thing to start having weird things happen.
And although my first encounter had been quite pleasant, perhaps this was another presence, a different ghost.
Maybe even a malevolent one.
I mean, the cottage was 500 years old. Heaven only knew how many people had died in it.
Shrugging it off (albeit a tad nervously), we made sure the timer was off. We moved all the furniture etc. back where it had been, double-checking that nothing was actually touching the cooker. Just in case…
We returned to our glasses of wine.
At around 2 a.m., the fire was dying out and so was the bottle of wine. We were about to head to bed when the timer went off again.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as chills raced up and down my spine.
We didn’t get much sleep that night.
A couple of days later, there was a knock at the door. A young woman introduced herself as Mandy, the neighbour next door. I invited her in for tea, warning her of the demolition zone that wasn’t quite ready for guests.
I flicked on our lovely new (old-style) light fixtures in the parlour and offered her a seat while I squeezed through the kitchen path to the kettle.
Mandy was friendly and chatty and after we’d got to know each other a bit, I said, “Seems we have a ghost here!” I figured it was big news.
Apparently, it wasn’t.
She said, “Yes, she’s often seen walking up and down the lane.”
Somehow, that confirmation freaked me out a little. I wasn’t sure if it was scary or exciting. Perhaps a bit of both.
“Good job she’s keeping fit,” I joked, a tad nervously.
“Yes, well, except for the part where she hasn’t got a head.”
She might has well have thrown a bucket of ice water at me. I sure as hell didn’t see that coming.
While I collected myself, the penny dropped. “Well, that would explain why I never see her face or hair.”
“Exactly. It’s believed that she’s Lydia Atley, a rather famous ghost here in Ringstead.”
“We don’t just have a ghost? We have a famous ghost?”
“Yeah, that’s the understanding here.”
“Wow. So who was Lydia Atley and why is she famous?”
“She was a young woman who went missing in the 1800s. Many years later, they found a skeleton that they believed was her but the skull was separated from the body. They figured they knew who did it but when more bodies were found nearby, they decided he probably hadn’t done it.”
“That doesn’t make much sense to me,” I replied, puzzled. “Maybe he just offed a bunch of other people?”
“It’s not likely in the circumstances, but he might have just inadvertently buried her where there were other corpses nearby.”
The lights flickered briefly. I was vaguely aware that this shouldn’t have happened with the recent rewiring.
“Why would they have thought the skeleton was hers, then?”
“It was the right size, seemed to be a female, and the jaw was missing the same tooth that she’d had pulled not long before she vanished.”
“She vanished?”
“Yeah, had an argument with the local butcher. He was married and she was having his baby. No one ever saw her again.”
I was silent for a moment, absorbing all of this information and offering a silent prayer for this poor young woman.
“So…did she live here? In this cottage?”
“She lived in a few cottages in this village and it is believed that this was one of them. Although perhaps she just likes the place, I don’t know!” she laughed.
“Wow. I wonder if our ghost is really Lydia.”
Suddenly, the lights flickered several times before dimming almost to the point of going out completely. After a few moments, they returned to full brightness.
My guest shot me a piercing look. “There’s your answer.”