At age ten I was sent to boarding school, a prep school based in an old manor house in a tiny village in Rutland. I have no idea why my parents thought this a good idea, or what they thought I was supposed to learn from the experience. I certainly learned a lot they wouldn't have appreciated. The building was rather rambling, set in expansive grounds on a slope between the village church and a small lake that marked the end of the village. there were at any time about a hundred boys there, many of them the children of either Anglican priests or Armed Forces families, and a smattering of boys from the last vestiges of Empire (mostly families in some form of colonial government). some of these boys and their backgrounds will follow.
As I say, I didn't learn a great deal. A smattering of Latin and introductory French are all the academic gains I came away with. Regarding sports, I learned to love rugby and fear cricket and became a proficient swimmer. I also learned to sing (I was in the school choir) and read a little Greek and an awful lot about religion. I learned how to survive bullying and ho to stick up for myself. I learned to hide in plain sight and the little proficiency I have in the art of lying I learned there. I learned to smoke, masturbate and fart loudly or quietly as circumstances required. I learned the gentle art of towel-flicking other boys and how to recognise both a bully and a sexual abuser and how to mostly avoid both classes of villain.
I learned how to survive a caning too; they were an inevitable part of school life as there were many ways of breaking the rules, and really only one punishment in the end. I wasn't a wicked boy (I had been well brought up!) but some crimes were just too tempting (like breaking bounds or sneaking food) or inevitable (being late to assembly or being up after bedtime and lights-out). For minor infractions like fighting or running in the corridors, a master or prefect could give a "mark' which was reported to the headmaster. Enough marks would mean being called to his study to be "swished" and the end result of that was "bend over, boy!) and either four, six or eight strokes with a thin cane. It was no fun, getting caned. The only good bit was being able to show one's stripes when changing for rugby; they were a mark of strange pride and the boys were good critics of his aim. Dr. Rathbone was strict but fair, and had a darned good eye, his stripes were usually evenly spread across the bum cheeks.
Sightings
I add this detail because I spent a lot of time waiting for Rathbone to call me into his study for punishment. Victims were required to wait at one of the doors leading to the first-floor¹ landing, and the landing was where one of the ghosts was said to appear. I have to reiterate that I don't believe in ghoulies and ghosties, or long-leggedly-beasties and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Nonetheless I have Seen Things. The "Grey Lady" was one of those things, supposedly the wife of a former Master of the Grange (according to school legend a rather unpleasant specimen of local lesser aristocracy, possibly a baronet). in any case he was reputed to have had an affair with one of the female staff and was caught in flagrante delicto by his wife, for whom this was the last straw. she ran from his bedroom to the second floor², whereupon she threw herself out of a window to her death. several of the boys told this story and said they'd seen her ghost running across the landing to the doorway to the upstairs.
So what did I see whilst waiting one night for my swishing? My meditation on the cut-glass doorknob was interrupted this particular night by a silvery apparition moving across the landing, seen out of the corner of my eye. I was quite surprised that I could see clearly that the figure was female, slightly built and with dark hair. As she passed through the doorway to the upper floor I recall her lifting her skirts to engage the stairs. And then she vanished upstairs and that was the end of it. moments later the study door was opened and my name as called. When I walked to that door I noticed a distinct chill and i fancied i could smell lavender. Mere minutes later i was shooed out with my four stripes on my sore backside and returned to my formroom to finish my "prep" (homework) and report on my punishment. I don't remember any lingering perfume as I came out, but still felt the chill. of course, at bedtime there was a tale to tell of my sighting as well as the showing-off of my welts.
The second unusual sighting occurred at the back of the house. The rear grounds were a set of terraces leading down to a narrow lake which drained into a stream that ran between the school and the sports field, through some rather spooky woods. One evening I was playing on the terraces with some of the other boys when one cried out that someone was coming across the lake. This would have been unusual; anyone wishing to make the journey would have walked down to the stream and hopped over it as it was little more than a dribble. Nevertheless, we all looked where he was pointing and sure enough, a figure was visible, seemingly climbing out of the water. The man appeared to be tall and skinny and was wearing a smock top and baggy trousers. The oddest thing about him was that he looked like a scarecrow in that he was made of sticks. He can't have been more than thirty feet away and it was clear that he wasn't flesh and blood. The boys all startled and ran back to the house. There was probably yelling and possibly screaming, and I remember being among the first to reach the door and turning back to see if the figure was still visible. He was, but not pursuing us, rather walking along the bottom terrace toward the woods. I can close my eyes and see him even now, a walking scarecrow of a man striding across the lawn. As we all reached the house we could see him heading into the woods until he either vanished or became indistinguishable against the undergrowth. We had not heard of this apparition, unlike the Grey Lady, so there was some doubt when we regaled others with our report. He was named the Stick Man and all boys vowed to keep an eye out for him. One other sighting was reported, a good deal later; one of the boys claimed to have seen him walking toward the sports field, a good hundred yards from our sighting, but intriguingly enough, along a path well known to all the boys as a shortcut through the woods. An inspection of the ground revealed no footprints or other evidence, and the report was largely dismissed, the boy in question being renowned for telling tall tales.
The third event was in the basement, home of the sports changing room and showers, and a cellar room known to the boys as Bootroom Down, a place where the boys were wont to clean their mucky gear after rugby practice every Saturday afternoon. It was probably a wine cellar as there were wooden shelves and racking on the walls. This must have been on a Saturday afternoon we were were in the changing room. From outside we heard a boy cursing. the boy in question was a Ugandan son of some important bureaucrat, known for his reliability and toughness. He claimed to have been startled by someone rushing down the stairs and running into Bootroom Down. of course we all went to investigate, bravely walked through the room and through an archway into the room beyond. This room was not generally frequented by the boys, largely because it contained nothing of interest beyond a large table with a stone top, known as the Altar. Rumours of human sacrifice were of course common amongst the boys, even though none believed the tales. Seeing no-one in there, we pretty quickly abandoned the search, just in case the rumours were true. We weren't fools and didn't want to take the chance of becoming he next sacrifice. Better safe than sorry. Nothing more came of this story, although two boys did report finding footprints by torchlight later in the day. A good while later a few of us were in the bootroom when we herd a commotion from outside, to find a small group of younger boys who'd apparently seen someone apparently running out of the bootroom and up the stairs. We took it upon ourselves to creep up the stairs, and saw what seemed to be footprints leading toward the dining room. The door to the dining room was open (unusually, as it would be kept closed other than mealtimes) and one of the kitchen staff was heard yelling at someone to get out of the kitchen. We did not investigate further, knowing that a flogging would be in line if we were found to have entered that hallowed room. Later we heard that one of the kitchen staff had witnessed someone trying to climb out of a kitchen window which would have been unusual, given the ten-foot drop to the driveway beneath, and ignoring the perfectly good door leading to the back terraces. The consensus was that it had been a ghost, even though none of our group had seen it.
My final tale concerns one of the few times I was legitimately on the top floor of the house, which was normally out of bounds to all the boys save the occupants of Ark Royal dormitory, the one dormitory on that floor, the remainder of the floor being occupied by the Masters' rooms. I'd been dispatched to fetch a master's briefcase from his study, and so I hoofed it quickly up the two flights to his rooms, collected the bag and set out and down again. Coming out of his room, I saw someone walking down the corridor toward me, saw him walk into the dormitory and though nothing of it until I glanced into the room en passant and saw no-one in there. I even paused long enough to crouch down and look under the beds and peer into the closet where the boys would hang their clothes. Predictably enough, there was no-one there and lo! my final ghost. Later investigation confirmed that Ark Royal was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a former manor house servant, whose room it had presumably been.
Horrorquest 2024
I suppose it is significant that the landscape and locations often seen in my dreams, my "dreamscape" includes parts of the school, mostly the upper floor and basement.
i must also reiterate that I have no rational, scientific explanation for the above, and dn't believe ther were ghosts. But equally, I cannot deny what i saw, either. more of 'things I have seen but still don't believe".
¹ I remind American readers that this was in England where we count the ground floor as floor zero. You'd call this the second floor.
² the third floor, for American readers.
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