I was about 11 when we went to the haunted rectory on holiday. It was in the middle of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, and another in our family’s succession of domestic holidays. We didn’t do foreign holidays, but I got to know a good portion of the countryside, and especially the history — my dad was a history teacher and to be honest I enjoyed the history too.
It’s not the buildings or the countryside particularly, at least not in themselves. It’s them as settings for all the life that’s happened there over the hundreds of years. The generations coming and going. it feels like a truism to say they’re just like us, but there would’ve been the same range of dramas and boredom, routine and adventure. So many lives, so much importance at the time, and now just melted away into time. Ghosts, kind of.
And ghosts was what came very close to getting me into trouble that time.
I took the other boy on a tour of the outhouses of the rectory, crumbling brickbuilt sheds with discarded junk in the corners. They were all embedded in the overgrown greenery. health and safety wasn’t a big thing in those days.
I guided him towards the spot I wanted him to investigate, bringing my plan to the climax, pulling him into my story, into the story behind the rectory itself.
There was a note there I wanted him to find. I think I maybe thought he’d see through it and enjoy the wind up. I’ve never been one for practical jokes and maybe this is why — I can’t make them funny. Or, the stuff I find not exactly funny but joyful and fascinating isn’t always shared by others.
That’s what happened this time anyway and maybe it put me off for life.
I’d been hanging around with him a for a few days, the pair of us killing the time between days out with parents, while the parents did whatever they did when they weren’t taking us somewhere. This wasn’t partying. My parents disapproved of such laxity. Visits and locations were educational. I didn’t entirely mind, I admit.
The rectory was in the middle of Bodmin Moor, in Cornwall, on the fringes of whatever bleak village had survived out there, down a long drive covered by trees, winding down into the dark.
It was divided up into holiday flats now — this was decades before AirBnB and they’d found it in some guidebook, but its heyday had been in the 19th century. The exciting part was that there was a ghost. I didn’t believe in ghosts, not for a second, but it seemed like there was evidence of it at least being occupied by a mad vicar, the kind the 19th century loved to produce.
This was the 1980s and there was no allowance made for mental illness. He was just mad, and therefore entertainment.
This was the story. Holed up in his rectory, he’d become paranoid somehow. The doors to the rooms had been painted garish colours, and each one named after somewhere in the Old Testament. He let vicious dogs run wild in the garden to keep people out, not that the parishioners needed much telling. They stopped attending his Sunday services so he replaced them with wooden cut outs, and preached to them every week. Evenutally he was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in the rectory.
And now we were going to stay there for a couple of weeks, using it as a base to do middle class holiday things in Cornwall.
There was at least one other family in another flat, which contained a boy my age. My head was deep in Richmal Compton’s William books at this point, and I naturally assumed events would happen, and things could be planned, and another boy to share them with seemed to mean life was for once playing out like it did in books, so I could work with that. We’d brought my aunt and uncle - my mum’s sister and her husband - and it seemed the adults were content to play nicely together while I went out to explore the garden with The Boy. He seems a cipher now, and probably did then.
One of the educational day trips was to a place called Wookey Hole, a network of huge caves where something or other had been mined going back to the 15th century. This was reasonably interesting, but better than that, it had a paper mill associated with it. A side hustle for the mine owner, I assumed, and they still did demonstrations of paper making, involving mushed up rags and huge tanks of water. The paper that came out the other end was dimpled and thick, and you could buy packs of five sheets in teh gift shop, as well as feathered quill pens. I was pretty sure the quill pens weren’t historically accurate — surely they had nibs on lengths of wood - but ancient stationery was enough to grab my interest. I bought a pack of the paper, and a quill pen. I think there was a pack which included ink too.
Then I was stuck with the dilemma of stationery fetishists throughout time. The paper was glorious and the mechanics of writing with a feather were intriguing, but what should I write? It needed to have some feeling of occasion to it.
And the two things, the Other Boy, and the mad vicar’s rectory came together. I’d already told him about the mad vicar, which he hadn’t seemed very interested in.
I wrote a note, with the quill on the handmade paper. I was naturally well aware of the language these things were written in, and the general grammar of ghost stories.
I wrote:
“Whosoever finds this note shall be haunted by me till the end of time.”
I knew less was more, even then. The weird paper and the quill pen calligraphy would add their own credibility.
The next day, I popped out and explored the crumbling brick outhouses after breakfast, and found a crevice into which I could wedge the paper. An hour or so later, while the adults were organising whatever it was they organised, I met up with the Other Boy, and started the next phase of my plan. I told him that I’d been reading that the mad vicar had left a stash of coins round the garden somewhere (stashes of coins were good. A note would’ve been too on the nose, and stashes of coins were tantamout to treasure). I suggested we should search for them.
He seemed a little sceptical, but willing to play along. I organised the hunt so that he’d be the one to search the crevice where I’d stashed the note.
I wasn’t entirely sure this would work, and wandered a few feet away to let it play it out. I might have to do some more steering, if necessary.
It wasn’t necessary. After a few minutes, he called me over. He seemed anxious and read the words out loud.
Apparently I’d caught a believer in ghosts. He was scared. I hadn’t bargained on this. I’d assumed he’d be just as sceptical as me, and while possibly pissed off for a little while,his reaciton would be aimed at me attempting to pull a fast one on him.
But no. He bought it.
Which was a problem.
I was happy and and pleasurably surprised to have drawn him into believing my story — writers are born young — but this was actual fear. He wasn’t enjoying this.
If I confessed, he’d be even more pissed off at me, and come to that, I wasn’t entirely sure he’d believe my confession.
Cowardice formed the better part of valour, and I decided I had to return to the adults to head out for the day’s delights.
I pondered it all day, with no answer. Endings are always tricky. Luckily we were late back that night and there was no sign of The Other Boy. I just hoped he’d developed some critical faculties in the meantime and realised his errors. I really couldn’t be held responsible for his credulity could I?
The next morning, I set out to prowl round the grounds again. Solo, this time. But The Other Boy tracked me down. I tentatively asked him whether he’d thought about our find at all. As if he wouldn’t have…
He had, apparently, been awake all night, and his older brother had asked him why.
The fool had shown him that bit of paper, at which the brother had said he would find me the next morning and ask for a sample of my handwriting.
On the one hand, I applauded the brother. He was clearly a man of the world who knew how these things were done, with some William Brown style unmasking of the miscreant. I didnt’ fancy that — my parents were far from the vague semidetached presences Richmal Crompton had created for William. I’d get a massive interrogation and almost certainly lose the quill and paper.
I took the sensible way out. I told The Other Boy that I’d happily give his brother a sample of handwriting later, but right now, I had to leave for the day with my parents.
I stayed out of the vicarage grounds for the rest of the two weeks after that.
POSTSCRIPT (because ghost stories always have them)
I’ve just googled the rectory in question - the most comprehensive article is here
The vicar, it turns out, was one Frederick Densham, who was rejected by his parishioners in the 1930s when he returned from missionary work in Africa and tried to inculcate them with progressive ideas. The cut out parishioners were invented by Daphne Du Maurier when she wrote about it — in fact her son turned up at the flat while we were there, much to the glee of my mother and her sister, who were big fans. I should’ve been gleeful too.
There was a film, too, 2009, when Edward Woodward played the old vicar, in both their last roles.
I prefer my story though.