The Curious Case of Craftly Hall

CPI CASE 374: Craftly Hall

Attending Investigators – Ernest Brundle, Carl Edwards, Dorothy Blakely.

It was in the early spring of 1863 that work began on the construction of what was to become Craftly Hall. Situated on open land in a quiet, sleepy corner of the countryside of Lower Craftly, the workmen faithfully followed the detailed plans of Arthur Millsand, the successful London doctor who was now seeking a quiet, comfortable locale in which to enjoy his retirement. When the work was completed the following May, Doctor Millsand and his wife, Violet, immediately moved into the house and, being something of a history buff, she soon took it upon herself to begin researching the area’s past.

She was surprised to discover amongst the sparse records at the village library that their new home had once been the site of a settlement decimated by plague in 1665. In the early 1700s a church was then built on the plot, with its own small cemetery that still remained in the grounds, although sadly the church had mysteriously collapsed and the reverend of the time apparently disappeared, feared deceased. There was a brief mention of a convict who had evidently escaped from a prison a few miles away, who was reported to have lost a finger on his right hand and was loosely linked to the incidents, but no other mention of him was made. Doctor Millsand assured his wife that the land’s past would have no bearing on their happy lives together, and for a time they settled into a quiet and comfortable existence.

That was until the spring of 1865 when, as he was preparing one of the outbuildings for restoration, the freshly retired doctor was struck by a falling wooden beam and killed instantly. Violet, cast into a deep and traumatised despair, refused to stay at the house any longer and so, the very next day, she went to stay with her sister, sent for her belongings and never returned to the area.

Craftly Hall then slumbered beneath a heavy silence, untouched for fifty-five years until Rose and Jefferey Binder took up residence at the beginning of May 1920, having been keen to find what they had called a ‘fixer-upper’. Impressed by the large and pretty grounds, the potential of the outbuildings and the calm quaintness of the small cemetery that stood nearby, the couple decided to wait until later in the year before undertaking the considerable renovations that were required, particularly in one part of the house, preferring to concentrate instead on settling into the handful of downstairs rooms that were more habitable. Jeffrey had garnered a not inconsiderable wealth from the inheritance of the agricultural hardware manufacturing factory his father had established, and had met his attractive wife there. While he continued working at the business throughout the summer, which had now grown to include the production of domestic clips and fastenings for paper and garments, Rose remained at the house, arranging their possessions and preparing for the changes to come. She had become unwell while employed at the factory, overcome by the effects of the phosphorus and sulphur that filled the air, suffering from sore eyes and developing a raw and prolonged cough. Her younger cousin, Alice, had similarly succumbed to a comparable affliction and so was brought into the house as the autumn arrived, to assist with cleaning and with the general upkeep of the property and its gardens.

It was Alice who first noticed something irregular in and about the house. One bright morning at the beginning of September she had been down to the cold, damp cellar in search of the source of scratching sounds she’d heard and found an old, empty birdcage, which she considered strangely unsettling. Then, returning to the kitchen, she saw someone she thought was dressed as a church reverend casually wandering beside the small cemetery. Shuddering at the idea of there being rats in the cellar, and wondering from where the reverend had come, she continued with her work and consequently forgot about them both. A few days later she again thought she had seen someone, this time a young boy peering in through the glass of the front door. However, when she went to investigate she had found no one there, although she was puzzled to discover a small stack of clean, shining pebbles left outside the door, carefully arranged from largest to smallest. Keen to remain at the house with Rose and Jeffery, delighted to have been asked to join them, she decided it was best she mentioned nothing of her sightings, nor of the way in which she had started finding certain objects such as ornaments, cups and other small items moved from one place to another. It was probably Rose who had moved them, she decided, despite thinking it somewhat odd.

The east wing of the building needed the greatest refurbishment, its rooms once the quarters of maids and servants who had been employed, albeit briefly, by Doctor Millsand. Although she could imagine no reason why these rooms and corridors should have fallen into such disrepair when compared with the rest of the house, Rose had determined to begin tidying and sweeping them through so she and Jeffrey could begin their repairs and redecoration. Having completed her work in one of the rooms she called for Alice to come and collect the sweepings into a dustpan for her, since the dust had irritated her cough and she needed to withdraw to the kitchen for a drink of water. As Alice began busying herself with her work she felt that, at her periphery, just for a moment, she had seen a figure in the corner of the room. The dark, almost translucent shape of a person, which vanished before she could fully turn her head towards it. Again she said nothing of it, despite now beginning to feel uneasy about the place but, when Rose called to ask if she, too, would like some water, the incident slipped from her mind.

On the next afternoon, as she once again returned to the derelict wing of the house, broom in hand, she stopped at the doorway of the same room and stared at the bare wooden floor. There, in the centre of the room, stood a pile of perhaps seven dinner plates, the top one covered in mouldy food while scattered around the room were various items of misshapen cutlery. As she looked, wondering how they could possibly have been there, she again became aware of something else, a sensation that she was not alone and, turning to leave, for an instant she once more saw a shadowy figure at the far end of the corridor, moving quickly away from her. This time, she thought, it could have been the form of a woman in a long, dark dress but, again, she thought it best not to trouble her cousin with it, despite how anxious it had made her.

It was only on the third day that she knew she had to talk with Rose since, just after lunch, as she was collecting the dishes which had strangely been turned upside-down on the dining table, she again saw the man dressed as a reverend, now standing in the garden just a few feet beyond the window, staring directly at her with an expression of dreadful sadness across his pallid face. Rose sat with her for almost an hour, trying to reassure her that it was probably just someone paying a trick on her, one of the local youths perhaps, with nothing better to do than intimidate the new residents. They had probably sneaked inside, Rose explained, leaving the mouldy plates upstairs before making their getaway. She would talk to Jeffrey about checking all the locks, she promised, and would ask if anyone knew who could have been responsible for such trickeries the next time she went into the village, which lay just over a mile away. Alice finally agreed that she would stay, but only after Rose had vowed she would not have to go into the east wing again.

Later that evening, after Alice had retired to her room at the other side of the house, Rose quietly told Jeffery what had been happening. A kind and compassionate man, he liked Alice and was happy that she would be staying, adding that Rose was right and that he would be sure to check the locks, lay a toxin in the cellar and ask at the factory to see whether anyone knew who might have been responsible for such immature activities. Satisfied it would be an end to the matter, Rose went to bed earlier than her husband since she was fatigued from the cough that still blighted her, leaving him to concentrate on some paperwork in the study at the centre of the building. The couple had chosen to make one of the better downstairs rooms into their temporary bedroom until they had completed the work in the house and, situated close to the kitchen as it was, Jeffrey often joked how he would miss such convenience for a midnight snack when they did eventually relocate.

At around a quarter to midnight Rose was disturbed by muffled sounds coming from the direction of the study and, concerned that Jefferey was still working at such a late hour, she drowsily got out of bed to find him and urge him to join her. The soft sounds, resembling someone shuffling along a wooden floor, continued as she approached the study but, when she reached the doorway, she realised the room was completely empty. The sounds stopped, there was no sign of anyone and, when she returned to the bedroom, she realised that Jeffery was lying in bed, sound asleep.

Several days passed and, although the weather was beginning to turn and the house never seemed to warm regardless of how often they stoked the several fireplaces, nothing of any note occurred. That was until one Friday afternoon when Rose was busy in the east wing once again. Folding and packing the few curtains that remained hanging at the smeared windows and wearing a scarf across her face to protect her from the dust, she noticed a small girl standing in the garden, looking over a low wall and appearing to shimmer in the pale autumnal sunlight. At the very same moment she heard a terrible crash from somewhere downstairs and, immediately concerned for Alice, she rushed away to discover what had happened. There she found her young cousin on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor just as she had left her some time earlier. Alice had heard and seen nothing and so, confused but no longer troubled, Rose returned to her curtains. Upon entering the room again she stopped and gasped as she saw that all the curtains she had previously taken down were now returned to their rails, hanging as though they had never been touched.

Shaken, Rose went back downstairs and sat alone in the study until Jeffery’s return from the factory, wondering if she had somehow gone into a different room by mistake, that she had become lost while walking along the corridor. Although this seemed to her a very unlikely conclusion, she grudgingly accepted that it was the only one that made any sense.

Two days later she was left alone in the house, as Alice had gone into the village to run some errands for the family. By now she had completed the packing of the curtains without further disruption and was occupied with sorting through the one item of furniture that remained in the east wing. It was an old, solid oak bureau, with a bottom drawer she was unable to open but additional drawers and compartments stuffed with papers and other miscellany. She found letters and postcards, small ornaments and mementos that she assumed belonged to whoever had lived there previously.  Reading through some of the cards she suddenly began to hear the peaceful sounds of a piano playing, the music drifting up the stairs and into the empty room. She turned to look over her shoulder with surprise. Even if Alice had returned earlier than expected, Rose neither knew she was able to play the piano, nor was aware that the old broken upright that stood downstairs was capable of emitting a single note.

Then, as the music faded, she discerned very small knocking sounds as though something might be trapped somewhere inside the bureau. Unable to find anything, it occurred to her that maybe it was caught behind it, although she could not imagine what could have been confined in so small a space. Using all her strength she was able to shift the heavy piece of furniture away from the wall but, rather than freeing whatever had been trapped, she instead saw that a section of wallpaper had been ripped away and something had been written on the plaster. As the knocking grew louder Rose leaned towards the wall, reading the almost illegibly scrawled words, ‘Rose, get away, can thee while.’

Falling back, shocked at what she had found, she shuddered as a stone suddenly dropped to the floor beside her. Then another fell, then another, as though the first drops of a rain shower. Another quickly followed, then dozens hit the wooden floor with great speed at almost the same time, bouncing across the room only to be replaced by yet more. Terrified, Rose covered her head with her hands and ran from the room, narrowly avoiding being hit by any of the missiles.

When Jefferey came home a couple of hours later she rushed to him, trying to explain what had happened, mixing her words and rushing through the story with such haste that he had to lead her to a nearby settee and implore her to breathe, to take a moment and then start from the beginning. She told him again, this time with more coherence, and he listened attentively without interruption. She also told him about Alice’s experiences, wondering what could be happening, how there could be writing behind the bureau, how dozens of stones could have fallen to the floor without causing any damage to either the windows or the ceiling. Coughing fiercely, with a headache that was quickly developing into a migraine, Jefferey prepared for her a tonic of ergot alkaloids, soaked her sore eyes with cotton swabs and then saw her to bed, doing his best to assure her that he would get to the bottom of it all and that she needn’t worry.

In fact, as his diaries would later reveal, Jeffrey was quite deeply concerned for both Rose and Alice. He wondered if their exposure to the chemicals at the factory and their subsequent physical difficulties was having some effect upon them, although he could not be certain what effect that could be. Maybe their eyesight had somehow become corrupted, perhaps due to all the dust and flaking paint in the east wing. He also entertained, with a creeping sense of apprehension, the idea that perhaps there was some kind of inherent family condition, a strain of mental instability of which he had hitherto been unaware. He had never known Rose to exhibit any symptoms of psychological asininity and started to grow anxious that he might lose her, that she might slip away from him. Over the following several days he stayed at home, taking care of both Rose and Alice, not allowing them to do anything other than rest and relax. He prepared for them a regimen of very mild sedatives on the advice of a local doctor he had arranged to meet without the knowledge of the two women, just so they would be able to sleep through the night and suffer less stress during the day. He felt distaste at doing such things since it went against his nature, but he could think of no other way to help them through this difficult time.

At night, as the women slept, Jeffrey undertook brief investigative tours of the house, examining the rooms for any signs of broken windows or shattered locks and even looking around the garden in case local ne’er-do-wells were lurking, but found nothing. The house was cold and quiet but, it seemed to him, at peace, which only made him fear further for the welfare of his wife and her cousin. Then, after another few days had passed, much to Jeffrey’s relief both women reported that they were much better, that they didn’t know what had come over them and were now feeling much more like their usual selves. Surprised by this change and persuaded that they had, indeed, recovered from whatever had ailed them and caused them such distress, Jeffrey returned to work at the factory at the beginning of October.

The following night, as her husband slept peacefully, Rose was briefly disturbed by what sounded like shuffling feet across the linoleum of the kitchen floor. Assuming it was Alice and not wanting to bother Jeffrey, she soon fell asleep again. Then, at some time after two o’clock, they were both awakened by the sound of gentle knocking outside their room, like someone tapping against the wooden doorframe and then, with a tumultuous force, it seemed as though something very large and very heavy had been allowed to roll down the stairs. They rushed to the door to see what could have been responsible but found nothing in the entrance hall had changed and no damage had been done. Turning back to their bedroom they were then horrified to discover several plates and bowls laying broken on the nearby kitchen floor, shards of the shattered ceramics and bent cutlery covering the entire space. Extremely panicked, the Binders returned to their bedroom, wedged the door closed with a cabinet and spent the rest of the night discussing again Rose’s previous experiences, Jeffrey full of apologies for not having believed her and promises of bringing the situation to a close.

As the sun rose, they scoured the selection of Craftly Post newspapers that had collected in one of the empty rooms downstairs, since Jefferey was sure he had quite recently seen an article that had something to do with these kinds of improbable episodes. It was Rose who found the article again, reading it aloud to Jeffery, and together they learned about the Committee of Psychical Investigators and its most famous researcher, Ernest J Brundle. A man of middle age, apparently long-established in the field of extrasensory and supernatural phenomena, the newspaper reported that he had just completed an investigation into a mysterious case where a young woman had been afflicted by the attentions of a ghostly young boy, who would follow her around her home and then disappear as soon as she approached him. The case was resolved by Mr Brundle and his associates on the Committee when it was discovered that the poor woman was suffering from visual hallucinations associated with a schizoaffective disorder. Her husband, it transpired, had grown weary of her and had been poisoning her with excessive amounts of amitriptyline, administered by a doctor as an aid to the fibromyalgia and tension headaches she had been facing and thus disrupting the neurotransmitters in her brain.

Jeffrey, feeling somewhat guilty following his own dispensing of narcotics to both Rose and Alice, agreed with his wife that it would certainly be a good idea to contact Mr Brundle and so, later that morning, she penned a letter to him by way of the address included in the article and Jeffrey quickly ran it down to the post office in the village. A few days later they received their reply in which Mr Brundle agreed that, since he would be close to the area the following Tuesday, he would make the time to pay them a visit. He had already, he explained, taken a room at a nearby inn and, after a few more days in which the house remained quiet, he finally pulled his Ford motor car onto the driveway of Craftly Hall.

He seemed to the Binders a charming man, well-educated and respectful of their situation. He immediately got to work setting up his equipment. From his car he brought measuring tape, cord, electric flex, batteries, a reflex camera, a cine camera, flashbulbs, tripods, string, a torch, a thermograph with which to measure discrepancies in temperature, infra-red lamps, graphene for the examination of fingerprints and several other items. He explained to them how any movement would trigger the camera to snap images, how he would be able to retrieve fingerprints should any items be displaced and asked them to get as much rest as they could since, should they choose to join him, their vigil would continue through the entire night. After they had agreed, and after Mr Brundle had seen the terror in the eyes of Rose and the worry etched into the face of her husband and told them to call him Ernest in an attempt to put them at ease he, too, settled that he would forfeit his room at the inn and accept their kind offer of sleeping at the house once the watch was completed.

He had told them that Craftly Hall seemed, to him, calm and quiet, and that he would be surprised should he detect anything other than the creaking of old beams and the typical settling of a house as the night crept in. Indeed, as he walked through its rooms during the night, while Rose and Jeffrey sat, with some trepidation, in the study, he was unable to find anything to rouse his suspicions that the building was either haunted or that someone within its bounds was responsible for the disturbances. It most likely does have something to do with unruly local youths, he considered, eventually concluding the night at the room Rose had prepared for him having taken only a few notes, seeing no lights from the flashbulbs or unusual readings from the thermograph. He placed the notebook on the table beside the bed, lay back onto the mattress and closed his eyes.

Almost instantly there came the sound of light footsteps by the bed, then an unusual rustling and, finally, the clump of something landing forcefully on the rug by the door of the room. Ernest sat straight up, reached for his torch to enable him to see more clearly across the room in the faltering dawn light and realised that the notebook he had placed on the side table only seconds before now lay, open and torn, on the other side of the room. He shone the torchlight around the rest of the room, scratched his head and then went over to examine the notebook, finding that the few pages of notes he had taken since he had arrived at Craftly - and only those pages - were now ripped from the book and had, so far as he could tell, completely disappeared.

Although the light in the passage outside his room was even more feeble than that within, as he opened the door he saw the back of a man who seemed to be dressed as a reverend, quickly passing into the kitchen. Ernest assumed, since he had vanished by the time he arrived there, that he must have made his getaway through the kitchen door and out into the garden beyond. That might well have been the case, he thought, reaching the door - had it not still been locked. Perhaps there might be something to this after all, he mused, calmly returning to his room and looking again at his notebook. After he had slept for just over two hours, he went into the village to use the telephone in the post office and then waited for the Binders to rise, informing them without describing explicitly what had happened that he had arranged for a couple of other members of the Committee of Psychical Investigators to join them at the house and they would, if Rose and Jeffrey consented, organise themselves into holding a séance.

With their agreement obtained and while Alice, who had slept through the night apparently not hearing or seeing anything, prepared breakfast, Ernest made use of the bathroom, noticing only after he was almost finished bathing that, written into the condensation on the larger of the two mirrors by the sink was the word, ‘You’. It came as something of a surprise when he then found, some time later, the word, ‘Go’, similarly written on a mirror above the lavatory. On both occasions, when he had availed Jeffrey of the news, the words had disappeared before Mr Binder was able to see them.

For the rest of the day Ernest equipped the dining room in readiness for the séance, having explained to Rose and Jeffrey exactly what such a thing would entail and what it was they might expect from such an assembly. He told them that he and his colleagues would attempt to contact any souls who may still be attached to the house, that they would try to find out what was keeping them there and then search for, if possible, a solution to the matter. Ernest had also spoken with the young reverend in the village when he had been to the post office, and it was he who arrived at the house first. Walking around with Ernest, Reverend Dixon explained that he would attempt to perform a cleansing of the building as soon as the séance was complete. He had been asked to perform such a service once before at a small, terraced house in the next village and had, so far as he was aware, been successful in bringing calm to what had otherwise been an apparently greatly disturbed household.

He had not, however, seen anything like the equipment Ernest had positioned around Craftly Hall, and listened with great interest as the investigator indicated what each item could do and why it was he had placed it in the house. Just as they finished their tour there came another ring of the bell and, as Ernest introduced his two colleagues from the Committee, the final preparations were put in place and the group gathered around the small circular table Ernest had moved into the dining room earlier in the day.

He sat between Rose and Jeffrey, while the two new arrivals – Carl Edwards and Dorothy Blakely - sat on either side of them. Reverend Dixon stood at the other end of the table and, with the lamps extinguished and candles flickering, the room settled into an anxious hush as they all arranged their hands flat upon the table so they would be touching their neighbour’s, and then Ernest began to speak. At first they sat in absolute quiet, with no indication that anything was going to change, as Ernest asked if anyone was listening and if there was anyone wishing to make contact with them. Next, he asked if Rose would join him in placing a hand on the planchette he had earlier left on the table, itself resting on a spirit board with letters and numbers painted onto it. Again, nothing.

Ernest, however, was not losing confidence. He sensed, although he did not know how or why, that there was something waiting to interact with them, if only it were given an opportunity to do so. It was then that two very loud and very clear knocks resounded across the room from the wood panelling of the walls. That was it, Ernest thought; that was the answer he was hoping for, then asked if whoever was there would rather they communicate in such a fashion.

Another two knocks.

Ernest asked if two knocks ought to be interpreted as a ‘yes’.

Two further knocks.

And one knock as a ‘no’?

Two knocks again.

Finally, Ernest asked if three knocks could be an indication of the person to whom he was speaking being unsure of something, that they wanted additional clarification. He received two further knocks and then, suddenly, Reverend Dixon called out in alarm, reporting that he was certain he had felt a hand upon his shoulder. Ernest, immediately grasping the situation, asked whether the spirit he had drawn forward wanted their communication to include the reverend, to which he received two more affirmative knocks.

Over the course of the following forty-five minutes both Ernest and the reverend posed questions while Rose, Jeffrey and the two Committee members listened intently. It transpired, as the knocking and questioning went on, that they were in communication with a gentleman who had himself been a reverend at the church which stood on the site in the 1700s, and that he appeared to be a distant relative of the current Reverend Dixon who was with them now. It was he, indeed, who had been seen around the house throughout the preceding weeks, although his responses indicated that he had meant no harm but had only wanted the Binders to be aware of his presence and to understand that he wanted to communicate with them.

He revealed that the source of the sounds, the writing on the walls and the mirrors, as well as the curious movement and placing of various objects around the house and the throwing of stones - it had all been the work of others, of those poor souls who had fallen into the terrible grip of the plague that struck the area in 1665. They were dreadfully unsettled, the reverend indicated, not only due to the way they suffered but also because they had now been forgotten, lost in time, and felt they should be in some way honoured since it had been they who first cleared the land on which later residents had made their homes.

As the Reverend Dixon began to tire, Ernest continued with more questions and, finally, they all came to understand what it was they could do in order to bring resolution to their spiritual visitors. It would be the construction of a small chapel, close to the house and to the position of the original church, and inside would be a plaque or some other kind of memorial, marking the courage and achievements of those who had passed in the 1660s.

Following the séance, and the remarkable happenings therein, Ernest Brundle, his colleagues Carl Edwards and Dorothy Blakely, the Binders and Reverend Dixon spent a restful night at Craftly Hall, and consequently there have been no further related disturbances since.

The Committee remains in close contact with Rose and Jeffrey, who report that work on the chapel is well under way, the small cemetery has been tidied and will continue to be respectfully maintained, and there has been a small sign erected at the site where those original settlers had perished, to mark its importance as they await the completion of a specially inscribed tablet which will be placed within the chapel. In the spring Rose plans to plant saplings and a beautiful, commemorative garden of perennial flowers in the area, which she hopes will remain a lasting tribute to both those early pioneers and to the poor reverend. Alice, too, remains at the house, the health of both she and Rose greatly improved and Jeffrey’s factory also appears to be becoming yet more successful. It is, what we can only hope to be, a happy ending for all of those involved.