A Series Of Unrelated Events ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 42 )

The Old Mill’s history once again causes concern. Some places ‘amplify’ what things possess from those that have lived before. A series of unrelated events may be what it seem so to the casual observer, but we know that there is no such thing as coincidence. 

A previously dormant energy has awoken!

The Old mill at the bottom of our high street, has long had the reputation of being haunted. This isn’t the Hammer Film type of haunting where scantily clad female guests are pursued screaming through dark corridors by Elizabethan ghosts with outstretched arms and rattling of chains. This is the ‘presence’ type of haunting where rooms for no reason can be plunged into a chilling cold, and not the fault of the freezer door being left open. Objects are thought to have moved, but so far that hasn’t been actually witnessed. Doors sometimes open of their own accord, and shut firmly as if by a draught, but not one that is noticeable. 

Prior to the Bradfords moving in, Dorothy Palmer, a ‘house whisperer’, was employed to clean the mill of any ‘guests’ that had overstayed their welcome, as well as their lives, and that may have included the Musgraves. If you remember it was thought the mill, being haunted, was the reason that the Musgraves moved in so as to justify the attempts on Lucy Musgrave’s life by her husband Mark. Eventually both were found dead in the property and theories still abound as to whether both deaths were unfortunate accidents or the result of supernatural agencies. The mill failed to sell for some time and its recent history was thought to be the cause. It was feared the property might remain empty indefinitely, however it went to auction and was bought very cheaply by Taylor and Barbara Bradford. 

I was one of the first to meet the Bradfords being appointed key holder so as to let Dorothy into the Mill. She told me nothing about her findings, saving them for her clients. Moving into a house with such a reputation may seem to some foolhardy, others may dismiss the haunting as fantasy. It might be a self-fulfilling philosophy, if someone believes the house to be haunted, they will see the evidence, or think they do. If they don’t believe it’s haunted, one hopes for their sanity that they will be satisfied with other explanations. 

I can see the Old Mill from my cottage front garden, it’s not unusual for me to catch sight of the Bradfords when they are in residence. All I knew about them was that Taylor was in the music industry where he met his wife Babbs, they had two dogs, both Cockers, one called Joe and the other Jarvis, named after the singers. 

Village life can be either predictable to a fault and you wish for some excitement, or something happens to energise it into a frenzy of innuendo or supposition, during which you desperately wish for peace to return, and to hell with the excitement. There’s seldom a happy medium, if you don’t include Dorothy Palmer.

New owners invariably wish to make some alterations and the Bradfords were no exception. Sometimes a little noise only serves to accentuate the quiet but after two or three weeks the sound of cutting and drilling ceased and tranquility returned.

After a week or so various trades returned but I presumed for finishing touches, so I thought little of it until Taylor called in to tell me they were leaving for a while and would I keep an eye on the place, and checked I still had the key. I asked him how long they’d be away, but he just remarked that moving into such a place may have been a dreadful mistake. I asked him what he meant,

‘You know we had some work done?’

I nodded.

‘Just some kitchen stuff Babbs wanted doing. Maybe its all in the mind but since then, well, within a week a pipe had burst in a bedroom and brought down part of a ceiling. Just bad luck, I guess. A couple of nights later two French doors were smashed, by the wind or something. A week ago while I was showering a part of the heating system burst billowing steam into the kitchen as Babbs was doing breakfast, more bad luck I suppose. Then a few nights ago the screen in our cinema room had fallen forward onto a chair and the back of it had gone straight through the screen. Maybe all just a coincidence, but hey . .’

‘Yeh, maybe,’ was all I was prepared to say.

‘So we have a place in Scotland and we’ll stay there until we decide.’

Taylor then asked me about the house whisperer and did I think it something she could help with?

I said I would ask her, but she would need his permission. He nodded and said she could use the number I had and then warned me that an insurance company would be contacting me to gain access. 

I arranged to see Dorothy Palmer on my way back from the Shaftesbury Recycling centre. They put to one side things that might be of use and I like to see what’s available. After a life time of dealing, old habits die hard. I repeated what Taylor had told me and gave her Taylor’s number.

Two days later we met at the mill, entered by the front and at the rear we walked through where the French doors had been removed, into the room where the ceiling had been been repaired but not repainted. The kitchen was adjacent and to the side was the utility and the boiler room in which a seam had split. A staircase took us down to the ground level at the rear and the cinema room where a century ago the mill’s machinery would have been. A large screen was, as Taylor had described, laying horizontal with the back of a chair poking up through its middle and fragments of screen everywhere.

Dorothy had said nothing but something had already occurred to me. Ignoring the walls, all these ‘unrelated events’, the top of where the screen had come loose, the burst pipe in the room above causing the ceiling to come down, the smashed French doors, and adjacent to them, the boiler room, all had happened within one small area of a large mill. Dorothy and I wandered around to see if there were any other signs of recent incidents, but nothing that we could see, and Taylor had not mentioned anything else.

Dorothy asked me to leave her alone for a while so I replied I would-be outside.

If you’ve ever been to see a clairvoyant, real or charlatan, part of their routine would be to be given an object and from it say something about its owner. It’s something I used to spend hours contemplating in my shop surrounded by antiques. I would smooth my hands over a bible box, or sit with a jewellery case hoping to conjure up, if not visions, then at least a feeling of someone to whom the object belonged. It never happened, either I didn’t have the gift, or the gift doesn’t exist, or if it does, I don’t have it. 

Dorothy found me sat by the trickle that was once the mill race and we enjoyed the view and the sound of running water dropping down from the mill pond above.

‘Well?’ I asked her hoping that she would be able to tell me rather than saving it for the Bradfords, but she just shook her head then told me that there was nothing that was out of the ordinary.

That begs the question, what is ordinary?

I asked her to follow me back into the building. Within the room near where I thought the focus of the ‘events’ was, I asked her if she felt anything. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply but after a few minutes she said there was nothing. I asked her to do the same, but then I opened the lid of the large Jacobean chest that was against the wall. Dorothy took a deep breathe then nearly fell to her knees. I shut the lid and helped her up.

‘I wasn’t ready for that,’ she told me.

It was no ‘clairvoyance’ on my part that identified the source of the trouble. Sat by the stream a phone call to Taylor had confirmed the recent purchase of a very fine Jacobean chest.

I phoned a dealer who would come and remove it immediately. I knew him to be a sceptic but suggested he get someone to give an opinion. I doubted he would. 

Some places, Dorothy told me still recovering, buildings particularly, amplify a presence. She explained it was a kind of resonance, like that she has with a presence, or a clairvoyant has with an object. Whatever stain that remained in the chest, a presence held from the past, and it was powerful, may never be felt in any other building, or by any other person, but it might.

The dealer phoned me a week later to tell me the chest was sold. I asked him who had bought it and all he told me was someone from the Shaftesbury area.

Listen to Village Tales and other short stories from the HONKEYMOON CAFE

 on Spotify, Anchor FM, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, 

Google Podcasts, Breaker and other platforms. 

Written and read by Barkley Johnson.