Publication Details
Helmshore Local History Society.
Publish date
Chris Aspin, a member of the SPR, has written a booklet containing paranormally-related anecdotes that have their origin in and around Helmshore in Lancashire. He is a local historian, and came across many of these during the course of his general researches into the area. Most were told to him personally, including a striking one from his grandmother and great-aunt which must have occurred in the late 1890s: they passed in the street, and spoke to, a local man they knew well, before remembering that he had hanged himself the day before. They saw him go into a pub, but on following him in (quite a brave thing for two teenage girls to do) were told that nobody had entered for some time.
This story is typical of the sort Chris Aspin has recorded. Many involve the ghosts of people, and animals too, including a ‘small bear’ on a staircase witnessed independently by two individuals unknown to each other. A pre-war commotion heard one night by a newly-appointed second footman at Compton Verney, and recounted many years later to Aspin, had apparently been experienced on a number of occasions previously, and was thought to be linked to the 1642 Battle of Edgehill.
Aspin also has examples of poltergeist activity, including one from his bank manager, not normally the sort of person with whom one discusses these things – or these days even has – and a Second World War instance of a dog that knew when its owner, or at least the son (a serviceman) of its owner, was coming home. There is a mediumistic communication involving the author’s grandfather, and a number of coincidences round off the booklet.
As Aspin points out in the introduction, these sorts of accounts can be found across the country, and they make intriguing, if frustratingly inconclusive, reading. Helmshore is changing, having been a place noted for its mills, but now part of the Greater Manchester commuter belt, yet these sorts of stories have a timeless quality that roots us in a place, and connects us to those who came before us. In turn, capturing testimony before it vanishes is a valuable project because we can never know what significance may be found in it by those who come after us.
The booklet is twelve A5 pages. Copies can be obtained from the author at £2 plus 60p p&p - email [email protected]. for details. I’m sure he would also welcome further stories about the area to add to his collection.
Strange Stories from a Lancashire Village. Helmshore Local History Society, 2014.