Ghosts in this post!

There are things people don't like to hear about. Talk about. See.

Ghosts and Clowns are top of the list.  Never understood the thing about Clowns, just weird blokes in heavy make-up. Oh yes, now I get it.

Ghosts are shadows of past lives, some are on a repeat loop. The thing that caused their death so terrible it makes an imprint on the timeline. So they die over and over again.  Anne Boleyn's ghost is very active. Running along the corridors of Hampton Court Palace to beg for her life, appearing on the stairs at the Tower of London going to her execution, walking through the long gallery at Hever Castle, the place where she was born.

On the Battlefield at Edgehill the battle is fought over and over, not by re-enactors as we are not allowed on the site, but by the actual combatants. Every year around the 23rd of October the sounds of a 17thC battle echo from the empty battlefield. Residents of Edgehill are used to it now. Around a thousand men died on that field. 

Gary Stocker, a ghost hunter did some research into this phenomena and found to quote him with grateful thanks:

Two pamphlets published in January 1643, A Great Wonder in Heaven and The New Year’s Wonder recounted how a couple of months afterwards, people in the area saw at night time the battle re-enacted in the sky. This was repeated every few nights and people from the area visited to witness it. A Mr Marshall, the minister in Kineton, went to Oxford where the King was based, and told him. He sent a commission, with six gentlemen, to investigate. Not only did they get first hand accounts, but saw it for themselves.

It was thought that it may have been caused by some of the war dead not being buried, so this was remedied. Since then the full scale battle has not been witnessed although occasional things are said to happen, including Prince Rupert leading his cavalry in a charge.

As a result of this being the subject of a Royal Commission, it is recognised officially in the National Archives, the only ghostly haunting to be recognised in such a way.

Whether you believe or not, there is something in the human psyche that recognises that something exists beyond our knowledge. I'll leave it there for the moment, but if you are on Edgehill and see Sir Ralph Verney's ghost wandering the field looking for his hand with the Verney ring on it, please tell him it's safe at home, and the current Sir Ralph still wears it.