The blog that goes bump in the night! A sideways look at spooky Sheffield. Two friends - Mike Kazybrid and Andrew Wooding - set out to find definite proof of ghostly goings-on in South Yorkshire. Join them in their regular adventures.
As a postscript to the last blog, Mike and I drove like the clappers from the ‘loose dogs’ of Hell-Clough and headed back to Bunting Nook just minutes away. We parked by the side of the road and nattered for a while about this and that and anything we could think of … anything, that is, except for the supposed haunted nature of the street we were in.
You see, Bunting Nook had completely lost my interest. The last time we were here, it promised so much, and delivered … nothing. I couldn’t imagine anything of a haunted nature happening here … ever. So much for birds never singing in this place. They were chirruping away even louder than before.
Funny thing was, as we happily chatted – about telly, pile cream, the education system and Bernard Manning (amongst other things) - night-time descended over good old Bunting Nook. The street lights flickered on and cast a dull yellow glow over everything, the air became still, leaves and litter stopped blowing about, and the silence around us was deafening.
Those birds had decided to call it a day. Either that, or the loose dogs of Hell-Clough had secretly followed us and had their merry way with them all.
Our conversation stopped dead. Both of us became aware simultaneously that a change for the worst had happened in our surroundings. We felt a deep foreboding. Dead spooky it was. For the first time ever, I began to believe that anything might happen in this place. Maybe the stories about Bunting Nook were true after all.
‘Waaah!’
(The gasp came from me.)
‘What’s up?’
(The enquiry came from Mike.)
My heart beat fast, my veins were icy cold, goosebumps raced up and down my spine, plus all sorts of other anatomical symptoms of a sudden and utter shock.
‘C-car,’ I stuttered. I’d glimpsed it in the mirror on the passenger side of Mike’s car. ‘Th-there’s a car right behind us. How long’s it been there? What does it want with us?’
Mike glanced over his shoulder.
‘It’s your car, Andrew. It’s been there all the time. That’s why I drove you here, to bring you back to your car!’
‘Oh. I see. Well, that’s all right, then.’
Feeling a right ninny, I reckoned it was time to leave. I bade Mike farewell and stumbled the three yards to my Vauxhall Astra. The street was still spooky, still silent and still surprisingly free of birds. I couldn’t see or hear a bird anywhere.
Then I noticed it. Right on the bonnet of my car. A massive great blob of bird crap, the biggest I’d ever seen.
‘I bet you think that’s funny!’ I said, shaking my fist at what I imagined to be a gaggle of mischievous birds sniggering silently in the trees above.
Either that, or the birds really had gone, and the mess on my car was a ghostly phenomenon from the nether regions. Did it have magical properties?
I might just keep it, or even sell it on the internet. Next time you’re on eBay, type ‘ecto-poop’ into the search box. It’s the genuine article, sure to be worth a fortune.
‘Hell-Clough? I’ve heard of Brian Clough … but is there really such a place as Hell-Clough?’ This was the question that raced through my mind as I perused the following ominous email from Mike:
If you're still happy about tomorrow evening at 8.00pm, could I suggest meeting at Bunting Nook again? The reason is that the place I'm wanting to check out is just a five minute drive away. The place is called Hell-Clough. We're talking about a tale of murder, lost lovers and the ghost of a fair eighteenth century maiden that's often seen. Much to tell, but I'll save that until we meet yet again!
My ghostly best,
Mike
How could I refuse? Fridays just aren’t Fridays unless they involve murder, lost lovers and fair eighteenth century maidens. That, and Vimto and crisps.
Mike filled me in the next evening as we wandered the secluded country lane that winds its way through Hell-Clough. Turns out there was this guy called James Archibald Durant who lived in the Hebrides back in the mid-eighteenth century. He was jealous of a male friend of his wife, so he fatally stabbed him (as you do) and his wife died of shock.
Fearing the law, James ‘Archie’ Durant fled with his daughter to England and bought some land in Hell-Clough. But jealousy struck again – he discovered that his daughter had acquired a secret husband. This wouldn’t do for Mr Durant so he got into a scrap with this son-in law of his, only to get himself killed in the struggle. The husband ran away, the Durant house in Hell-Clough became run-down and derelict, and in recent years there have been strange, eerie sightings of a woman in a long gown and large hat. Durant’s grieving daughter?
Some have reported her as floating across a corn field and disappearing into a group of nearby trees. All very spooky. Eager to experience the mystery first hand, we kept our eyes peeled on our travels as we looked for a woman in a long gown and large hat.
‘Mike, is that a woman in a long gown and large hat over there?’
‘No, it’s a man on a tractor.’
‘Oh, sorry Mike.’
A few minutes later…
‘Andrew, is that a woman in a long gown and large hat down there?’
‘No, it’s a badger.’
‘Oh, sorry Andrew.’
And so on, every few seconds, for the duration of our evening ramble. It felt like we’d stumbled across every possible lifeform imaginable, except for the one thing we were looking for. How dare these ghosts not perform on cue! Don’t they know we’re on the lookout for them? Don’t they realise we want a genuine ghostly experience to spice up our desperately ailing blog?
We did find something mysterious on our travels, though. We wandered past a compound of sorts, which was thoroughly fenced off, with gates firmly bolted. Outside, there was a large sign to scare away trespassers, with the warning: BEWARE LOOSE DOGS. We scratched our heads. We’d heard of loose women … but loose dogs? Was this a red light area for the canine species? And, more to the point, what were these ‘loose dogs’ liable to do to us if they were to leap over the fence?
The painful realisation made us race all the way back to Mike’s car. Very quickly.
The car happened to be parked by the very field that one of the ghost sightings took place in. And in one corner of the field was a massive great pylon, crackling with electricity. Is it significant that there are pylons all along the Stocksbridge bypass as well, where the mad monk has frequently been sighted? It makes you think, doesn't it?
It certainly made me think.
To explain: I found myself at a quantum physics conference in London a couple of years ago. I didn’t understand all of it - (correction: I didn’t understand most of it) - but one thing I do remember is that matter doesn’t exist. At a quantum level, all we are is vibrations and energy, and when we die we leave our energy field behind. Could it be that electricity pylons, or other massive concentrations of electricity, excite these vibrations and energy fields and somehow make them manifest themselves again? Bring them back to life, if only for an instant? Just a thought, for what it’s worth.
Also, what if that sign back there had said: BEWARE LOOSE CHANGE instead? Imagine the compound’s caretaker lobbing dangerous 50 pence pieces or handfuls of tuppenny bits at us. A frightening, but potentially lucrative, thought…
…though admittedly not as frightening as the fact that there’ll be another blog entry soon…
Just four blog entries in, and Kazybrid and Wooding (our good selves) are dead chuffed at a mention on the Haunted England website. Have we made it now in the online world of the paranormal? The mention can be found here - maybe you could rate us or leave a comment? - but the site itself (www.hauntedengland.net) is also worth a browse.
Don't spend too long there, though. Come back here, 'cause we're just a few days away from posting our extraordinary (ish) experiences at Hell-Clough in Sheffield. What did we stumble across (and have to wipe off our shoes when we got home)? And what is the significance of the cartoon above? All will be revealed in the next few days...
(Cue dramatic fanfare from a BBC 'spooky music' record.)
Since starting this blog, Mike and I have noticed a truly strange phenomenon: everyone we’ve spoken to about our quest has a ghostly story or two to tell, usually followed by a recommendation of a haunted location for us to visit. No one’s laughed at us (which makes a change) – everyone’s been most eager to help with a tip-off or a story of their own. Maybe you could do the same by leaving a comment at the end of this blog?
For what it’s worth, here’s my own personal ghost story: the mysterious hovering lampshade of Bordesley Green. This really happened, and I’ll never forget it! Back in the nineties – I believe it was winter - I was staying at my aunt and uncle’s in Birmingham. There I was, reading a comic in bed in the spare room, when I glanced up at the ceiling … then froze in my bed!
This wasn’t just because it was a cold house (they didn’t have central heating); it was because I was witnessing a truly ghostly phenomenon. The lampshade hanging from the ceiling was moving quite dramatically of its own accord … from left to right, from right to left, from north to south, and all directions in between … as if some invisible figure was pushing it about for devious reasons of its own.
I couldn’t move for ages. Would this nightmare ever end? To add to the mystery, the air directly below the hanging lampshade seemed to be shimmering. Evidence of a ghost perhaps … or was it some sort of heat haze?
‘Heat haze?!’ It was then that I realised what was happening. One of those portable three bar heaters – switched on in the spare room - was giving off heat directly below the lampshade. The heat (as it does) was rising, and it was this that was causing the lampshade to swing randomly about. No ghost, then … unless Morphy Richards heaters give off paranormal entities, but there’s nothing about this in their warranty.
The reason I mention this is that on our travels, Mike and I fully expect to see lots of strange things. But how do we know when something is ghostly, and when it’s something that’s perfectly explainable by science or psychology?
On our first trip to Stocksbridge, our mileometer packed in for the entirety of the trip, only working again when we headed for home. How do you explain that? On our second trip, nothing happened, other than indigestion from guzzling a fun pack of Gold Bars too quickly. Ghostly noises emanated from our stomachs, but it was nothing to do with the spirit world and everything to do with trapped wind.
This being our third excursion, we wanted to ‘up’ the probability that we’d stumble across something worth writing about. So Mike chose Bunting Nook, a leafy road near Graves Park in Sheffield, noted by a number of paranormalists for the following phenomena:
There’s a ghostly dog, known as a boggart;
An eloping couple who died after falling off a horse (what were they doing on the horse?) supposedly haunt the lane;
A man with the surname Glover was brutally murdered in the nineteenth century, and visits his grave in Bunting Nook once a year;
Birds can never (I repeat, never) be heard in the lane;
There’s a ghostly figure that walks through walls.
There you go: five possible paranormal encounters. How could we go wrong?
We spent the best part of two hours wandering up and down the lane, and unless the boggart’s changed its form into that of a squirrel with halitosis, we didn’t come across it. There was no eloping couple, no grave in the graveyard with the surname of Glover, and those birds that don’t sing … they were screaming their lungs out at us, and we were treading in evidence of them all over the pavement.
This left the ghost that walks through walls. On our third walk up the lane, I examined one of the walls more closely, cleverly made of sharp flat rocks piled on top of each other. Protruding between two of the rocks was an ice lolly stick. Hoping I’d find a joke on it, I plucked it out, but there was no such joke … not even a Lyons Maid logo burnt into the wood.
A hundred yards or so down the lane there was another lolly stick on the floor, lying between all the bird poo. Then another lolly stick near the bottom of the lane … or, to be more accurate, only half a lolly stick.
Mike and I tried to imagine the events that led to this thought-provoking display of litter. Did the lolly sticks originate from just one person, greedily sucking his or her way through three of the lollies in succession while traversing the length of the lane? Or maybe the lollies were consumed by three people walking together, who happened to suck at different speeds and finished at different points on their journey. And why was one lolly stick half the size of the other? Maybe the three friends in question were two giants and Ronnie Corbett?
These are mysteries we are still pondering days after our experience of the legendary Bunting Nook. And can you blame us? There was nothing else for us to ponder … other than how we were going to get all that bird crap off our shoes.
Ah well. Better luck next time?
PS. Maybe the significance of the ice lolly stick is that our ghost likes to walk through Walls?
What a phenomenal week it’s been! With our Sheffield ghost-hunting blog barely two weeks old, we have been the proud recipients of what can only be described as blanket media coverage … a veritable whirlwind of publicity in a frenzied Sheffield media storm.
In short, we had blanket media coverage at the bottom of page 10 of The Star on Thursday … and on Saturday morning, on BBC Radio Sheffield, we had blanket media coverage for 9½ minutes at 7.45 in the morning, between traffic reports and an interview with a vicar about trespassing sheep.
The Star article, expertly scribed by columnist Martin Dawes, can be eyeballed here:
As for our radio appearance – on the Saturday Breakfast show, hosted by the effervescent Gareth Evans – I was hoping to provide a ‘listen again’ link, but there isn’t one. Too bad, as there seems to be a ‘listen again’ option for just about every other Radio Sheffield programme, including Sunday Breakfast, and Gareth Evans’ weekday shows.
Was it ghostly intervention that prevented our interview from being archived? Even though we’ve just started, are we getting so dangerously close to the truth that spooks are scared of us and need to intervene with BBC mixing desks and digital recorders? Naah … I didn’t think so either.
I’d like to report on one spook, though … the subject of our first investigation, the mad monk of Stocksbridge, a ghost that purportedly interferes with the inner workings of cars because he isn’t happy about his eternal rest being disturbed by the sudden new influx of noisy traffic thundering along the Stocksbridge bypass.
You may recall that our first outing to Stocksbridge was in Mike’s car, the mileometer of which inexplicably packed in for the entirety of our exploration and only started working again when we headed away from the so-called haunted area.
Trying to be scientific – we decided to pay a visit to Stocksbridge again – but this time in my car. Cynics could say that maybe Mike’s mileometer was faulty and it was all just coincidence. But if the mileometer stopped in two separate cars on two different journeys, then we would really have something worth writing about.
Our experiment paid off. Sure enough, as Mike hopped into my passenger seat and we set off from Meadowhall car park to the busy Stocksbridge bypass, my mileometer…
…worked perfectly, and it did so for the remainder of the evening. Ah well. At least it was nice getting out for a drive, as well as pigging out on a family pack of Gold Bars, kindly supplied by Mike.
The only thing I can think of is that maybe, just maybe, the mad monk is pleased with us for spreading the word about his frustrations. He only does his stuff with people he’s narked with, but by sticking up for him we’re now in his good books and he’ll leave our cars alone. So the fact that our mileometer worked perfectly might still be definite proof that the mad monk exists. Not convinced? Don’t blame you, but I’ll leave you with this final true fact.
After dropping Mike back to his parked car at Meadowhall, then heading for home in my own car (in Waterthorpe near Crystal Peaks shopping centre), I put my iPod on ‘shuffle’ mode. There are hundreds of possible songs on there, but just minutes from reaching Waterthorpe, shuffle threw up Rasputin by Boney M again, that celebrated hit single about the most famous mad monk in history. What are the chances of that, eh? Was it a sign from the mad monk himself? It makes you think, doesn’t it?
The mad monk of Stocksbridge might be pleased with us, but he has a terrible taste in music.
My mate, Mike, and I now have definite proof of ghost activity in Sheffield. It’s true! And the proof comes in three forms:
1. Boney M
2. Mike’s mileometer
3. Crinkle cut crisps
Mike and I both live in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. We’ve been talking a long time about checking out various alleged haunted spots round town to find definite proof of things that go bump in the night. But last month, we finally plucked up the courage to embark on our first excursion. Mike had treated himself to a snazzy ghost hunting hat for this auspicious occasion – (I don’t know what ‘auspicious’ means, but it sounds good) - and I came armed with knowledge gleaned from half-an-hour’s research on such reputable websites as YouTube and Wikipedia.
It could have been a mammoth failure. A wasted evening with nothing to show for it but bleary eyes from the late-night drive and half a tank less of petrol. But our adventure was such a rip-roaring success that it is now going be the first of many, many more. We hope you will follow us as we blog about our various ghost-hunting exploits in and around the Sheffield area. Definite proof will present itself to us in droves, I’m sure of it. (I don’t know what ‘droves’ means, either. I promise to invest in a dictionary before the next blog post.)
The object of our first peek into the paranormal was an infamous character known as the mad monk of Stocksbridge. The legend goes that a monk from the distant past was refused burial in consecrated ground by his fellow monks for some shady, nefarious reason (in other words, I don’t know). In recent years, said monk has been sighted either roaming the roads, or interfering with the inner workings of passing cars. What he has against cars, I’ve no idea. But if some local council decided to build a ruddy great bypass over my deconsecrated burial ground – bringing with it tons of pollution and traffic each year – well, I might go mental as well.
Onto my first proof. I had agreed to meet Mike at the car park of Meadowhall shopping centre, on Friday night at 7.30pm. As usual when I drive, I had my iPod nano on full blast in shuffle mode. After a soothing ditty from The Carpenters, quite by chance none other than the seminal seventies pop classic ‘Rasputin’ by Boney M pounded through my speakers. The significance? Rasputin is the only chart hit ever to deal with the thorny issue of monks who are mad … or rather, one in particular: ‘Ra-ra-rasputin’. Coincidence, or what? I don’t know for sure if our Mad Monk of Stocksbridge was ever the lover of a Russian queen, but it does make you think … doesn’t it?
Now in the mood for our ghostly adventure, I traversed the car park and soon found Mike sat waiting in his own car. We exchanged excited greetings, I dutifully strapped myself into the passenger seat while he adjusted his natty hat in the rear view mirror, and before you could say ‘ectoplasm’, it was: key in the ignition, and Stocksbridge bypass, off we go! But the strangest thing happened as we drove.
‘Blimey, Andrew!’ said Mike on the motorway.
‘What?’ I said peering through his windows as we drove into the drizzly night, wondering if he’d sighted an apparition or something. ‘What is it? What’ve you seen?’
‘The mileometer. It’s stuck – it won’t budge. The mileometer’s jammed at zero!’
Mike was right. I couldn’t tell you exactly when it happened, but somewhere between Meadowhall and the bypass, Mike’s mileometer went on the blink … in other words: as soon as we started heading for our possible meeting with the mad monk, someone who is infamous for fiddling with cars. The mileometer remained stubbornly broken for the bulk of the evening, amazingly only springing into action again when we decided to call it a day and head back for Meadowhall shopping centre. Coincidence, or what? It makes you think … doesn’t it? Add to this the fact that Mike's engine failed at a roundabout, and for the rest of the evening the car would only work in second gear.
I’m afraid we didn’t spy any hooded, cloaked figures on our travels, but it didn’t take long for ominous rumbling sounds to invade our consciousness. I wish I could tell you these were echoes from the great beyond as we encroached on the mad monk’s territory, but – rather boringly – it was just our tummies. We were famished!
Mike parked as soon as he could and we tucked into a feast of Rice Krispies Squares (chewy marshmallow flavour – yum!) and salt and vinegar flavour crinkle cut crisps. The rumbling disappeared as our appetites were sated, but soon there was a yelp from Mike.
‘Blimey, Mike, what is it now?’ I asked, reaching for another helping of Rice Krispies Squares.
‘My crisp packet,’ said Mike, his face as white as a chewy marshmallow. ‘I swear I opened it the right side up … but look!’
I did look. And my face turned white as well. For, chillingly, the logo and writing on the crisp packet was now the wrong way up! It makes you think … doesn’t it? It certainly made me think, especially when I heard a barely concealed giggle from the driver’s seat as we pulled away from the side of the road to continue on our adventure. Could it have been that Mike, in his haste, had ripped open the wrong end of the packet, realised his error, then tried to blame it on a supernatural occurrence? How often do we take our mundane mistakes, or everyday coincidences, and try to explain them away in a romantic made-up worldview of otherworldly affairs, rather than own up to a sobering recognition that life is sometimes just drab and ordinary? I certainly don’t!
So anyway, back to this mad monk ghost thingy…
Scrub that third proof off my list, then. That was Mike and no one else. And, in hindsight, I don’t think somehow that a spectre crept into my iPod nano and selected the most played mp3 in the genre of ‘Cheesy Europop Singles From the Late 1970s’.
Which just leaves the mileometer incident. That’s something I can’t explain. It seems far too much of a coincidence that the mileometer packed in just as we set out for haunted Stocksbrige, and only began working again when we headed away. Maybe something did happen that night. Something from beyond our five senses, something from above our dimensional plane, reaching into our mechanistic cause-and-effect world and making a difference in our physical reality.
But why would a monk from centuries past want to make it his life’s work … correction: his undead’s work … to sabotage people’s cars? It’s not something any sane person would want to do. Maybe this is proof that he really is mad. And why not? He wanted to be left in peace and now his world has been invaded by concrete, carbon monoxide, rusty hot dog vans, mounds of litter, and endless dirty great metal structures known as electricity pylons dominating the previously peaceful horizon.
So, does this monk really exist? And if he does, what is his state of mind? I can do no better than leave you with the words of Boney M as they eloquently sum up the mental state of a similar monk from the past:
We've been working in comics for over 30 years and started collaborating 20 years ago. Between us we've written and drawn characters such as Spider-Man, Desperate Dan, Transformers, Bananaman, The Bash Street Kids, The Tick, Count Duckula, Do-Do Man, Savage Sidney, Shaun the Sheep, and many, many more. Wooding writes; Kazybrid writes and draws.
As a postscript to the last blog, Mike and I drove like the clappers from the ‘loose dogs’ of Hell-Clough and headed back to Bunting Nook just minutes away. We parked by the side of the road and nattered for a while about this and that and anything we could think of … anything, that is, except for the supposed haunted nature of the street we were in.
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