I tried a bit of one-upmanship. I told her about sitting by a camp fire in the Grand Canyon, half asleep, and seeing a sort of hologram of my father in the flames. Lynsey wasn’t impressed. That was just wish-fulfilment. Not the real McCoy. So when Wayne Drew, late of the BFI, rang me to tell me that he had bought an ancient farmhouse in the wilds of Norfolk and wanted me to go there for the weekend, the first question which tripped off my ego was, “Does it have ghosts?” “Ghosts.” said Wayne, “Ghosts! It’s over 800 years old. Of course it has ghosts.” Wayne was happy to tell me about how he had come to purchase the house and some weird experiences he had observed since moving in. He heard about the farmhouse from a friend in the Norwich Historical Society. His claim that it was a house with ‘history’ intrigued Wayne. He immediately approached the owner who turned out to be the Vicar of a well-known London church. They reached an agreement and the Vicar sent him the records. Everything was in order so the sale was arranged. Once the legal business had been done Wayne received another file of papers. Among them a well thumbed sheet from the Historical Society. Noticeable were a number of white patches of correcting fluid. He managed to make out what had been hidden. The phrase, “the use of the pentagram is best left to the imagination” stirred his bowels a little. It was the first time he had heard about the pentagram. He looked around the house but could find no sign of it. A couple of days later an old lady turned up at the gate. She had lived in the house at the end of the lane for 83 years. Matter of factly she told Wayne about the oddballs, witches and warlock who had lived in the house over the years. She also asked what he thought of the ‘Devil’s sign’ on the floor. Wayne tried to tell her that he hadn’t found it but she was already babbling on about the axe-murderer who had run amok. She wandered off down the lane, cackling to herself in a very witch oriented way. Wayne confessed to me that he had seen the man at the foot of his bed. Heard ghostly footsteps in the room above when he was alone in the house and had caught a fleeting glimpse of the girl on the stairs. He said he wasn’t particularly bothered by the apparitions – just hoped the reputed axe-murderer didn’t make a return visit. It all sounded too wonderful to be true. This was my big chance to have a supernatural experience which would have Lynsey’s Weeping Waif in floods of tears again. I wandered around the old walled garden that had seen centuries of man’s endeavour to tame nature. Nature was still fighting back with its storm troopers of nettles, dandelions and convolvulus but they added to the perfection – if that is possible. It was beautiful and interesting but I was waiting for the dark so that I could check out the phantoms. In the dining room by the light of candles, our feet firmly on the place where the pentagram used to be, we ate a thoughtful meal. As soon as I decently could I went up to bed. I had a torch by the side of the bed just in case Wayne decided to give me a thrill by providing a few home made apparitions, went through what I would do if the Girl, the Man or the Boy should appear – and promptly dropped off to sleep. I think Wayne was happy to wave me good bye that afternoon. I guess my determination to see some sort of apparition so that I could get one over on Lynsey de Paul had worn him out. He promised to invite me again – in the future. What do I do about Lynsey? Well, I haven’t seen her since but I think I will be economical with the truth and extravagant with the narrative. Ingrid Pitt will be back again next Tuesday; in the meantime, read her last column here.
