Is Exeter haunted? Where does Hallowe’en originate? Online Features Editor Meg Lawrence investigates.
As you go out trick or treating tonight, beware. Amongst those dressed in capes and masks, covered in fake blood and face paint there may be something you didn’t expect to see – a ghost. No, not your average lazy friend who chucked a sheet over their head and cut out eye holes because they couldn’t be bothered to get a costume, an actual ghost.
According to paranormal reports, many areas of Exeter are haunted. Ever seen a ghost as you’re casually strolling down Forum Hill? One website suggests that Exeter University has its own resident ghost, a Workman who has been spotted since 1967, and has been described as ‘a phantom man dressed in painter’s overalls… seen walking down the corridors.’ But it doesn’t end there – a whole host of other phantoms are described in different areas of Exeter.
According to a report entitled Supernatural Britain, Exeter is the fourth most haunted city in the UK, with nine in every 10,000 residents reporting a ghost sighting since records began.
Has a three-headed figure ever caught your eye when strolling around the Cathedral grounds? That would be the infamous ‘Three Headed Entity’, which has been spotted since 1998 ‘moving silently across the green.’ Moreover, it has been reported that the ghost of a Nun haunts the Cathedral grounds, disappearing as soon as she is spotted.
Exeter Cathedral, Not So Spooky in Daylight
Going to Exmouth on a sunny day will never feel the same again. According to reports, in November 1737 ‘Fishermen on the shore caught a four foot tall humanoid, with duck-like feet and a tail protruding from its back. It tried to escape, but was killed when the fishermen beat it with sticks. Another fish-man was caught a few months later in the same area, though this one was described with more seal-like qualities.’
So, when you’re strolling down Magdalen Road trick or treating tonight, keep your wits about you. A giant bat is reported to haunt the road. It is probably more likely that this bat was a result of heavy drinking rather than a paranormal phenomena, but indeed on 25th May 2000,’ a witness walking down the road late at night stated he watched a giant bat, with a wingspan of 1.2 metres, swoop around the churchyard along this road.’
With an overwhelming number of accounts of paranormal experience in Exeter, and across the rest of the world, can any truth be taken from them?
Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell, author of “The Science Of Ghosts” has admitted that ghosts are mostly the creation of people’s imagination, and evidence of them is almost always man-made. In an interview with NBC News, he stated that: “Much of what so-called ghost hunters are detecting is themselves. If they go through a haunted house and stir up a lot of dust, they shouldn’t be surprised if they get a lot of orbs in their photographs.”
He added: “If ghosts exist, then we don’t really die, and that’s huge. … It appeals to our hearts,” he said. “We don’t want our loved ones to die. We have this whole culture that we’re brought up with, that encourages this belief in ghosts.”
“No one is bringing you a ghost trapped in a bottle,” Nickell said. “What they’re offering is, ‘I don’t know’. Over and over, they’re saying something like this: ‘We don’t know what the noise in the old house was, or the white shape in the photo. So it must be a ghost.’ These are examples of what’s called an argument from ignorance. You can’t make an argument from a lack of knowledge. You can’t say, ‘I don’t know, therefore I do know.’… If I could just teach people a little bit about the argument from ignorance, I think we could give the ghosts their long-needed rest.”
Ghost Of A Civil War Solider
Almost half of people in the UK believe in ghosts and the supernatural – if you encounter one tonight don’t worry, half of us will believe you.
And, if underneath the ghost stories, apple bobbing and costumes, you actually wondered where Hallowe’en originated from, it began as an ancient pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead.
The Celts celebrated New Year’s Day on the 1 November, and believed that during the night before, the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest.
It was believed that on New Year’s Eve, everyone who had died that year would move on to the ‘next world’ and so Celts lit bonfires to send them on their way, and to stop them interacting with the living. This was known as Samhain festival.
However, in the early centuries of the first millennium, Christian missionaries attempted to change the Celtic religious practices, and created All Saints Day on the 1st November, to worship Saints rather than the dead. People still wanted to celebrate the dead, and All Saints Day was soon replaced by Hallows Day. Over the years, Hallows Day was celebrated the evening before and became Hallows Eve, this became Hallow Evening, and eventually Hallowe’en.
Despite the vast reports of ghost sightings, we have no real evidence that they exist. Parapsychology, the study of consciousness in relation to telepathy, precognition, near-death experiences, reincarnation and apparitional experiences to name a few, has been studied worldwide for almost two hundred years. In this time, it has concurred many experiments into the ideas of the supernatural, but has produced no hard evidence. Although it is now most greatly studied in privately-funded psychology departments in the UK, its credibility as a science has been disputed because of the lack of evidence it provides.
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, Hallowe’en is a great excuse to watch rubbish films, dress up, and eat sweets. However, if you are out trick or treating and happen to have a mysterious three headed figure join your group please take a photo, maybe do a quick interview – you could help solve Exeter’s paranormal mystery.
Have you had a supernatural experience? Contact us at features@exepose.com, and we will publish them online.
Meg Lawrence, Online Features Editor
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