The Flying Dutchman

There are few ghost stories as enduring as the legend of the Flying Dutchman. The tale of the ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever is perhaps the most famous of maritime legends. But there are in fact several versions of the story, and it is unclear exactly how and when the legend began.

There are some details that remain consistent across each version, however. The curse laid on the ship, to sail on a never-ending voyage from which she can never make port, is usually said to be punishment for some great sin committed by her captain, and sometimes by her crew. In many versions of the tale, the vessel is said to glow with an ethereal light. Sighting the ship, which is often accompanied by bad weather, is always taken as an extremely bad omen. Many vessels are said to have met disaster shortly after an encounter with the phantom.

The tale is generally believed to have originated in the seventeenth century, though the oldest extant versions date from the eighteenth. According to one version of the story, the captain of the Flying Dutchman made a pact with the Devil in exchange for the fastest ship on the seas. Another version names the captain as one Hendrick van der Decken, and identifies the ship as an East Indiaman that sailed from Amsterdam for the Dutch settlement at Batavia around 1680. The voyage was uneventful until the ship reached the Cape of Good Hope, when a sudden storm wrecked the rudder and tore the sails to shreds. The crew, believing the storm to be a warning from God, advised the captain to abandon his attempt to round the Cape.  In a rage, van der Decken is said to have rejected their pleas to make for port, swearing an oath that he would remain at sea until the Judgement Day rather than do so. In retribution for his defiance of the Almighty, so the story goes, he was sentenced to do just that.

According to other tellings, however, the captain’s crime was to kill his wife and brother, who he wrongly suspected of having an affair. In still other versions, the vessel is a pirate ship, cursed for some dreadful crime committed by her crew. Some witnesses claim to have seen skeletal figures manning the rigging, or the captain himself begging for mercy from the heavens. Others say that the Dutchman tries to lure other ships on to the rocks, so that the sailors will drown and be forced to join the crew of the phantom ship. Supposedly, a member of the Dutchman’s crew can gain rest only if another sailor takes his place. There are other versions, however, which say that the captain may visit shore once every seven years, searching for the love of a good woman, the one thing that can break the curse. It is claimed that, if hailed, the crew of the ghost ship will offer letters for delivery to long-dead people on land. Accepting these, however, is certain to bring misfortune.

     

There have been countless reported sightings of the spectral vessel over the years, in locations all across the globe, but particularly in the waters around the Cape of Good Hope. There were sporadic reports throughout the nineteenth century. The captain of HMS Leven, a Royal Navy warship, recorded two sightings of the Dutchman in 1823. Twelve years later, another British ship encountered an old-fashioned vessel heading straight for them in the midst of a terrible storm, which vanished just as a collision seemed inevitable. And in 1879 the SS Pretoria also encountered the ghost ship after changing course in response to strange lights, which were taken to be a distress signal. The crew of the steamer reported sighting a strange sailing vessel, which vanished when the Pretoria approached.

One of the most famous nineteenth century encounters involved a young British prince, who later went on to become King George V. In 1881 he was serving as a midshipman aboard the ironclad frigate HMS Bacchante. On July 11 of that year, while sailing off the coast of Australia between Sydney and Melbourne, he recorded in his diary: “At 4am, the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows.” The apparition was sighted on this occasion by thirteen witnesses. The prince’s tutor, John Dalton, who accompanied him on the Bacchante, described the ghost ship as being aglow with a red light. A few hours later, the lookout who had been the first to spot the Dutchman fell from the topmast and was killed.  

Sightings continued during the twentieth century. In 1911, the Orkney Belle, an American whaling ship, seemed about to collide with the Dutchman off the Cape Peninsula, until the ghost ship performed her usual trick and vanished. In 1923, a century after HMS Leven encountered the phantom, it was again sighted by Royal Navy personnel. One of the witnesses, Fourth Officer Stone, drew a picture of the ghost ship. The vessel, which they studied through binoculars, was reported to be glowing with an eerie light and to have a transparent mist where sails should be. Stone, and Second Officer Bennett, another witness, were subsequently interviewed by the Society for Psychical Research about their experience.

Another well publicised incident took place in March 1939, on Glencairn Beach on the tip of South Africa. Several dozen people on the beach reported seeing a fully rigged sailing ship suddenly appear out of the haze, her sails drawing well despite a lack of wind. Just as the ship appeared to be heading for destruction on the coast, she vanished as suddenly as she had appeared. Numerous articles about the incident appeared in newspapers the following day, with various theories being advanced to explain the sighting. The obvious explanation for the mystery ship was a mirage – that the people on the beach had seen a naturally refracted image of a ship sailing somewhere over the horizon. But witnesses stated that the ship was quite unlike any modern sailing ship, and was of a design that last sailed more than two centuries earlier. Several identified her as a Dutch East Indiaman.

In 1942, the Dutchman reportedly sailed into Table Bay. In the same year, the phantom vessel was sighted in the waters off the Cape by HMS Jubilee, which changed course to avoid a collision. In 1943, an Australian naval vessel, HMAS Beresford, disappeared while travelling westward towards the Cape. Before her disappearance, Beresford broke wartime radio silence to broadcast her final signal, a two-word message: ‘Flying Dutchman’.

The Dutchman does indeed appear to have been very active during the wartime years. Two witnesses aboard an American warship, USS Knight, claimed to have seen the phantom in broad daylight, approaching their convoy on a voyage to South Africa in 1944. They described her as an old-fashioned vessel with tattered sails, looking as though she was beating into a gale, which came within two thousand yards of their vessel before vanishing. Fearing ridicule, however, the two seamen did not officially report the sighting. The German Navy also had encounters with the Dutchman during the course of the war. Admiral Karl Doenitz recorded that several of his U-boat captains had encountered the ghost ship, particularly off the Cape peninsula. Most of these vessels were lost quite soon afterwards. One reported witness, however, the U-boat ace Otto Kretchmer, survived his encounter with the ghost ship, though another submarine from his wolf-pack was subsequently lost.   

Sightings continued after the war. In October 1955 witnesses aboard a Samoan yacht, the Joyita, apparently reported sighting a fast-moving galleon following their vessel. The following month, the Joyita was found abandoned north of Fiji, her passengers and crew missing. In the same year, the phantom ship was reportedly spotted from shore, by witnesses in a Cape Town café. And in 1959, the crew of the Dutch freighter Straat Magelhaen reported a near collision with the Flying Dutchman. The phantom ship was reportedly under full sail and a figure could be seen at the wheel.

There have been no well-authenticated sightings of the Flying Dutchman in recent years, leading some to speculate that the phantom ship and her crew may at last have been released from their curse. Others believe that the Dutchman still roams the seas, waiting to catch some unlucky vessel and her occupants unawares….  

Borley Rectory

Borley Rectory

Once known as England’s most haunted house, latterly dismissed by sceptics as merely the scene of an elaborate hoax, the story of Borley Rectory continues to stir controversy seventy years after the building itself was demolished.

The small Essex village of Borley stands on a hillside overlooking the valley of the River Stour. Its church dates to the twelfth century, while the famous rectory, a rambling Victorian building, was constructed in 1863 on the reputed site of a mediaeval monastery. Its first occupants, the Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull, his wife and children, moved in shortly afterwards. Over the following decades, so it is claimed, innumerable strange happenings took place at the rectory. There were sightings of a headless monk, a spectral nun, a phantom coach and the ghost of a former priest. There were reports of poltergeists, bells ringing, mysterious writing appearing on walls and strange monastic chantings. There were phantom lights, sudden temperature drops, unexplained smells, objects mysteriously appearing, and countless other inexplicable phenomena.

The happenings reportedly began not long after the Bull family had moved in. They started with mysterious footsteps and taps in the night, and progressed to phantom voices and the inexplicable noise of ringing bells. Then one of the daughters claimed to have seen the figure of an old man in a top hat in her bedroom, and another daughter was reportedly awakened by a slap in the face from an unseen assailant. A ghostly nun was sighted on several occasions.

The nun apparently became quite a nuisance, startling visitors by peering in through the rectory windows. Sightings of her were said to pre-date the rectory’s construction. She was said to be a wayward sister from a nearby convent, who had eloped with a monk from the monastery that once occupied the site of the rectory. When the pair were caught, so the story went, the monk was beheaded and the nun was walled up alive.

Despite the unnerving phenomena, the family stayed. In 1892 Henry’s son, Harry Bull, succeeded his father as parish rector, and continued to live in the house with several of his siblings. The younger Bulls seem to have enjoyed telling servants and villagers that the house was haunted. As he grew older, Harry Bull spent much of his time in the summerhouse, from which vantage point he claimed to have seen the ghostly nun, a phantom coach and other apparitions. By the time he died in 1927, the rectory had gained a strongly established reputation as a ‘haunted house’ in local folklore.

After Harry Bull’s death, the house stood empty for more than a year, until the new rector, the Reverend Guy Eric Smith, took possession. Soon after moving in, while cleaning out a cupboard, the vicar’s wife found a brown paper package containing the skull of a young woman. Following this, the couple reportedly experienced phenomena including unexplained footsteps, phantom lights in windows and ringing bells, and Mrs Smith reported sighting the phantom carriage. The Smiths contacted the Daily Mirror, which sent a reporter and published the first in a series of articles about the rectory. The paper also arranged for a paranormal researcher, Harry Price, to visit the house. Several new phenomena apparently coincided with Price’s initial visit, including poltergeist activity and ‘spirit messages’ tapped out from the frame of a mirror. Objects also began to mysteriously appear, including pebbles, keys and medals. The Smiths had apparently had enough and left Borley in July 1929.

The house again stood empty until the following year, when the Reverend Lionel Algernon Foyster (a cousin of the Bulls) moved in with his wife Marianne and their adopted daughter Adelaide. The Foysters too were soon claiming to have experienced paranormal phenomena. In 1935 the priest wrote an account of various strange happenings during his time at Borley, including servants’ bells ringing of their own accord, objects being thrown about, shattering windows and Adelaide being locked in a room with no key. Marianne Foyster claimed to have been thrown out of bed by the poltergeist, and to have seen various apparitions. On two occasions, her husband had attempted an exorcism with no success. Various writings appeared on the walls, most of them addressed to Marianne. These were mostly illegible, but one was a plea to ‘get help’ while another asked for ‘light, mass, prayers’. Two small fires also mysteriously broke out in the house, and there were often strange smells, especially of lavender. The hauntings continued to attract public attention, with further articles being published in the Daily Mirror and several paranormal investigators visiting the house. Harry Price himself returned to the rectory in October 1931. The Foysters left Borley in October 1935 due to the vicar’s declining health.

The next priest of the parish chose to live elsewhere, and the rectory stood empty until 1937. In May of that year Harry Price took out a lease on the house, and advertised for ‘responsible persons of leisure and intelligence, intrepid, critical and unbiased’, to join a rota of observers. Out of a total of more than two hundred applicants, he chose forty-eight. Various paranormal happenings were reported by different members of the team, including moving objects, unexplained noises, a piece of soap being thrown across a sealed room, and a sudden and inexplicable temperature drop of ten degrees recorded on a thermometer. A medium who conducted a séance in the building claimed to have made contact with the spirit of a 17^th century French nun. This unfortunate lady, the medium claimed, had left her convent and travelled to England to marry a member of the Waldegrave family, who had occupied Borley’s manor house at that time. She was said to have been murdered in an earlier building on the site of the rectory. The medium also claimed to have made contact with a second spirit by the name of Sunex Amures, who said he would burn the building down at nine o’clock on the evening of 27^th February.  

After Price’s one-year lease came to an end, the rectory was purchased by a Captain W.H. Gregson. While he was in the process of moving in, the rectory caught fire and was gutted. Gregson blamed an oil lamp being knocked over in the hall. The insurance company believed the fire had been started deliberately, but were unable to prove it. A Miss Williams from nearby Borley Lodge claimed to have seen the ghostly nun in an upstairs window while the house was burning. Other witnesses spoke of seeing spectral figures moving about in the flames. The date was 27^th February 1939.

In 1940 Harry Price published a book, entitled The most haunted house in England, which set the seal on the rectory’s national and international fame. In August 1943 Price conducted a brief excavation in the ruins of the house and discovered bones, which he believed to be those of a young woman. Local opinion, however, held them to be animal bones. The remains were eventually buried in the churchyard at Liston, after Borley church refused to accept them. Price published a second book about the house in 1946, entitled The end of Borley Rectory, further cementing the fame of both the rectory, and Price himself.

After Price’s death in 1948, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) investigated the Borley case, and their findings were published in a 1956 book entitled The Haunting of Borley Rectory. It concluded that Price himself had fraudulently produced some of the phenomena and that others had been faked by Marianne Foyster. Other phenomena, it was concluded, were due to natural causes, such as rats, and the unusual acoustics of the house.

Some of the legends surrounding the house definitely appear to have been false. In 1938 the Essex Archaeological Society stated that the monastery that had supposedly once occupied the site had never existed. There was no known historical basis either for the tale of the beheaded monk and the walled-up nun. The stories may have been made up by the Bull children to romanticise their home, possibly inspired by similar stories in fiction.

In later years Marianne Foyster admitted to having faked some of the phenomena herself. She also admitted to having an affair with the lodger and using paranormal explanations to cover up their activities. Louis Mayerling, a member of Price’s team, also admitted many years later that Price and his associates, including Mayerling himself, had faked many phenomena. Yet even he claimed to have experienced genuine paranormal activity in the house on at least one occasion. Charles Wintour, another member of Price’s team who later became a well-known newspaper editor, concluded that the house was genuinely haunted, but also stated that Price was exaggerating the phenomena and destroying the credibility of any genuine paranormal activity captured.

Whatever the truth is, it should be remembered that reports of paranormal activity at the rectory started long before Price and Marianne Foyster came on the scene. Spectral happenings are still reported to this day, from the site of the rectory and in the nearby churchyard. While it does appear that the Borley stories have been exaggerated, and at least some of the phenomena were faked by Price and others, some people still believe there is a core of truth in the rectory’s reputation as England’s most haunted house.