Glynis Amy Allen and Graham Adrian: Ghosts of War
(978-1-910027-60-8)
One of the most evidential accounts of spirit return was described by Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), a scientist who became interested in Spiritualism after getting to know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Lodge had made his name by discoveries and inventions in electrolysis and electromagnetism, including the first moving coil loudspeaker and the first Morse Code transmission. His friendship with Doyle deepened when both men lost sons in the First World War. Second Lieutenant Raymond Lodge, twenty-six years-old, fought with the Second South Lancashire Regiment and Sir Oliver was told the circumstances of his death in 1915…
Grief-stricken, Sir Oliver was persuaded by Doyle to have sittings with the well-known trance mediums Alfred Vout Peters and Gladys Osborne Leonard, during which he became convinced that Raymond’s surviving spirit was in genuine contact. He documented these meetings in detail and published his account in 1916.
For example, Raymond communicated to each medium separately and at different times that there was a regimental photograph in which he appeared twenty-one days before his death. He said that the photograph would show him holding a walking stick, and that there was someone behind him leaning on his shoulder. The Lodges were not aware of this photograph, but two months later the mother of one of Raymond’s fellow officers sent them a copy of it.
In another sitting, Raymond came through and identified himself by his nickname, Pat. Ever the scientist, Sir Oliver continued to test the communication and asked Raymond to name one of his brothers. The answer given was Norma, which confused his father. Asked to try again, the correct name Noel came through. But when Sir Oliver discussed this with his sons later, he learned that Raymond would use the name when he teased his brother at cricket. Neither of the boys’ parents had known about this.
Sir Oliver – an eminent physical scientist – was quite certain that his son’s spirit had survived.
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When I worked at Oakwood Hall Chest Unit I met Amy, who had been in the Women’s Royal Air Force during the Second World War working as a driver for the Red Cross… ferrying wounded patients to hospital. One day she had been sitting outside the hospital, waiting for the next trip, when her husband Bill came to sit next to her, offering her a cigarette.
“What are you doing here?” she said to Bill. “You’re supposed to be in Germany. Anyway, you’d better go.” Matron looked at her and asked who she was talking to.
“There’s no-one there,” she said. “Come on, we have casualties to see to.” Amy turned back to her husband but he had vanished. Then she clearly heard his voice, coming out of thin air.
“Get away from that ambulance, it will be bombed.”
No, there was no-one there. Bill had vanished and Amy wondered if she was going mad. But she knew this was a warning. Then all of a sudden she heard the German planes overhead on a bombing mission. She ran inside the hospital just in time and heard a huge explosion outside as her ambulance was destroyed.
“I was nearly blown up,” she said to the Matron. “But my Bill told me not to drive the ambulance.” Then Matron held out a telegram to her that had just arrived. Bill had been killed in action three weeks earlier. But he had saved Amy’s life.
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A most reliable witness of a ghostly apparition was the famous comedian and actor, Michael Bentine. During WWII he was stationed at RAF Wickenby, a base for Lancaster and Wellington bombers.
Mr Bentine describes his experience, which led to a lifelong interest in the paranormal, in his book The Door Marked Summer. He had just returned to base after two days’ leave in London, reporting to the Guard Room at 11.50 p.m. Walking towards his hut across the snow he saw, some fifteen yards away, a colleague approaching him in the moonlight. It was Flight Lieutenant Walker who was nicknamed Pop because he was in his thirties, a lot older than his fellow airmen. Mr Bentine shouted out a greeting and waved a salute to him, which Pop appeared to acknowledge as he walked to his own hut. Bentine says he then felt a sudden chill but assumed it was due to the cold.
The next morning, he was woken up by a colleague who expressed his sadness about Flight Lieutenant Walker. More than a little surprised, Michael Bentine asked him what he meant, since he had seen Pop only the night before.
The colleague said this would have been impossible as Walker had died before Bentine’s return to the base. He explained that the Flight Lieutenant had volunteered to accompany a new crew on their first mission over Berlin. Their Lancaster had made it back to Lincolnshire but, perhaps because of the low cloud cover, then crashed into a wood in Haunton. All the crew were killed. Michael Bentine now realised that he had seen and spoken to a ghost.
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The battle of Antietam in Maryland on September 17th, 1862, was the single bloodiest day of the [American] Civil War. In twelve hours of ferocious fighting, which ended in a Union victory, there were over twenty-three thousand casualties. The worst of the fighting took place in and around a sunken road, afterwards called Bloody Lane. During the battle, the 69th of New York, nicknamed the Irish Brigade, had charged the Confederate line successfully despite suffering very heavy casualties.
This is the most haunted spot and strange stories have been told by numerous visitors. A school party of boys from McDonogh School, Maryland, was walking along Bloody Lane and reported hearing a chant that sounded like “Fa-la-la-la-la” from the Christmas carol Deck the Halls. Now, when the Irish Brigade charged, they would raise their emerald banner and yell in Gaelic, “Faugh-a-ballagh!” (“Clear the way!”).
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The first major battle [of the English Civil War] was fought at Edgehill on Sunday, October 23rd, 1642, in open countryside near the Warwickshire village of Kineton, in the Midlands, both armies numbering in the tens of thousands. The Royalist army, called Cavaliers, was marching to capture the nearby town of Banbury before intending to head south and occupy London. The Parliamentary forces were commanded by Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. They later came to be called Roundheads because of their tight-fitting helmets.
By evening there was stalemate, with around a thousand men having been killed and perhaps three thousand injured. In the morning, they were too exhausted to fight and so withdrew.
In Warwickshire, village life more or less returned to normal although the battlefield was still strewn with the unburied dead. Then at midnight on Christmas Eve, shepherds tending their flocks nearby heard drums and the groans of injured soldiers followed by the sounds of battle. Hiding as best they could, they then witnessed the frightening ghostly apparitions of soldiers fighting. They told the local Justice of the Peace and the Minister what they had seen and the next night many villagers gathered, seeing and hearing the same things.
Word soon reached King Charles himself, who appointed a Royal Commission of six officers, some of whom had fought at Edgehill, to ‘report upon these prodigies…’
However, the officers saw the apparitions for themselves and even recognised some of the soldiers, in particular Sir Edmund Verney, one of the King’s favourites and his army’s Standard Bearer. Their report, A Great Wonder in Heaven, showing the late apparitions and prestigious noises of the war and battles, seen at Edgehill, near Kineton was published on January 23rd, 1643, and remains the only official recognition of ghosts by the Public Records Office.