SOMETHING OTHERWORLDLY IN THE OLD SCHOOL TOWER     Do you believe in ghosts? A lot of people don’t, despite there being ample anecdotal evidence of their reality. I was open to the idea but lacked personal experience of them, when I made an unannounced visit to my old school one sunny day in the Easter vacation of 1977. While there, I walked around and took several photos of the place. It was all very quiet. The pupils were absent and hardly anybody else was about. When I returned to Montreal, where I was then living, I had the film developed and some of the pictures enlarged. One was framed and hung up on display. A few weeks later, while peering at it, I noticed what seemed to be a figure standing at an attic window. That surprised me because I knew the attic was unused and always kept locked, So I used a magnifying glass to take a closer look. It showed me the figure was a woman clad in an old-fashioned dress. Her unexpected presence suggested that she might be a ghost. My Alma Mater, Hadham Hall, is a large Elizabethan country property which stands on the summit of a hill about five miles west of Bishops Stortford, in Hertfordshire. It was used as a school between 1953 and 1997, but has since been sold and converted into private flats. The coloured photograph below shows the main house, where those few of us who were boarders lived and had many of our lessons.         We knew the building was supposedly haunted by a former maid-servant, who had drowned herself in a nearby pond after being abandoned by her unfaithful lover, but none of us ever encountered her apparition in its long, dark and echoing corridors. The present house and the other large brick buildings were erected by the Capel family, who owned Hadham Hall from about 1572 to 1901. The turbulent seventeenth century in particular brought them more than their share of tragedy. The following portrait shows Arthur, Lord Capel (1610-49) with his wife Elizabeth and five of their children. He fought with King Charles I during the Civil War and lost his head as a consequence. His eldest son Arthur (1631-83), who stands beside him holding the arm of his chair, was many years later imprisoned in the Tower of London (in the same cell which had held his father), where he either cut his own throat or was murdered by having it cut for him.         The photograph below is the 35 mm black-and-white picture of the Hall’s front entrance which I took on that remarkable day. If you look carefully at it you may just be able to make out a figure standing at the left-hand side of the uppermost central window of the tower on the right.         Below is the same window greatly enlarged. The spectral woman can be seen quite clearly, her hands resting on the sill, with white cuffs above them, and her face (with visible eyes and eyebrows) held close to the glass. She wears a long-sleeved antique gown, which outlines her breasts, and she sports what appears to be a tall hat. It is the presence of the latter which suggests she is not the wraith of a drowned nineteenth century maid-servant, but rather is that of a lady from a much earlier age.               And here is a further enlargement of her. The lower half of her face is seemingly obscured by a pad or handkerchief, perhaps once tied there to protect her from the Plague. This feared disease made regular appearances in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was thought to be carried in the air. There was a particularly bad outbreak in 1647, which reached even the smallest villages.         The most notable feature of the ghost is its prominent eyebrows, which, as the Capel family portrait shows, it shares with Elizabeth, Lady Capel, although hers are not quite so arched. The clothes of the ghost are also similar in style to hers, in that the sleeves reach down to the wrists and the upper body is covered right up to the neck. So the spectre might even be hers! But even more astonishingly, framed in the left middle pane of the window to the right of the central upright, just beneath the shadow, can be seen another face, larger in size and evidently male. The eyes are big and dark, the nose broad and snub, the very large, partly open mouth has thick lips which droop noticeably on one side, and its wide and high forehead is apparently topped by thick hair.         And behind it to the right, there may be yet another male figure, possibly wearing a cravat and clad in a jacket, albeit much less clearly distinguishable than the other two. It is also looking out of the window. Further enlargement of the first male form, with accompanying computer enhancement, was done by Dr Eric Flitney, who is likewise a former Hadham Hall pupil, at St Andrews University. The enhancement startlingly reveals that beneath its human façade, there resides the form of a demon, the sight of which prompted Dr Flitney to exclaim: ‘Oh, my God, that’s amazing!’ And unless the Vatican has evidence to the contrary, it is possibly the only demon ever photographed. Yet it seems, I think, to be looking out somewhat disconsolately at the world, as if it is the custodian of the other two figures and by this duty is made as captive and as lonely as they are.         The final picture, which was taken on a subsequent visit to the Hall, shows the tower and its three windows from the inside.         The attic was then completely empty and very dusty, and it is salutary to reflect that the demon and his charges are perhaps obliged to remain there indefinitely. Their loss of liberty throws a pall of unspeakable sadness around them. We can only wonder what the lady, whoever she was, did to deserve this. Rodney Davies Web-Link  www.ghosttees.com