A HEAL Gffost the Binstead Haunting Re-Visited
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A HEAL GffOST The Binstead Haunting Re-Visited Introduced and Annotated by Edward MacDonald Sunset at Binstead. B i n s t e a d stuff at that. Meanwhile, the essential, respectable English matron of good underlying facts of the case tend to lose Victorian stock. We know little enough ree-shrouded and years-laden, themselves in the story. about her or her husband; we know a TBinstead House sits alone on a But sometimes, just sometimes, we good deal more about her family. Her gentle swell of land overlooking the meet someone who has encountered father, William Ward (1787-1849), had Hillsborough River in Marshfield. It is the supernatural firsthand, someone been a Director of the Bank of England invisible from the highway. Only by observant, reliable, and, perhaps, a and a deeply conservative Tory MP for following along a long clay lane can little skeptical. Their accounts are con- London. (A touch of historical whimsy: you catch glimpses through the leaves crete and specific, tied to times and he was also one of his era's most cele- of white walls and shuttered windows. places, people and events. They are brated cricketers). The eldest of her When constructed, some 150 years ago, reporting, not story-telling, and the four brothers, William George Ward Binstead was deep in the countryside, result is often eerier than the best-told (1812-1882) gained a different sort of four dusty miles from Charlottetown. tale of the supernatural. It is also, to notoriety. He began his career as a fel- In recent decades, though, the city has some extent, at least, verifiable. Such is low of Balliol College, Oxford and in been creeping ever closer and now, the case with the strange occurences at 1840, was ordained an Anglican priest. modern subdivisions inch their way Binstead House in Marshfield, Prince To his family's dismay, he became a across the fields from St. Peter's Road Edward Island during the third quar- leading figure in the Oxford Movement towards the estate. But they keep their ter of the 19th century. within the Church of England, was distance still, and the open fields What follows is a rare firsthand degraded from his university degrees somehow preserve the illusion of account of the Binstead haunting. It for his heretical views, and converted isolation. was written by a woman who seemed to Roman Catholicism in 1845. A col- A century's worth of renovations and perfectly willing to believe in the super- league of Cardinals Newman, Manning, additions masks the original architec- natural and published by a scholarly and Wiseman, "Ideal Ward" left his ture of the early-19th century building. Society that was prepared to take her mark as an outspokenly conservative, Nevertheless, it remains a handsome seriously. In providing names, dates, Catholic theologian and philosopher. house behind its palisade of hardwood and details, she gives us the opportun- What effect all of this had on Ward's trees. Nothing about it —- except, per- ity to examine an Island ghost story in sister is unknown. Her family's prom- haps, its age — suggests that Binstead its context and to do, as it were, an inence (another brother, Rev. Arthur B. was ever haunted. autopsy of the case. This is more re- Ward, had a distinguished career at It was. vealing than one might think. Although Cambridge University) does suggest, This is the story of that haunting. the Binstead Ghost seems to have gone however, that she was a woman of good about its haunting quite oblivious to breeding and social standing. She was the current state of the world, the born Georgina Mary Ward. It is typical Introduction: A Tale for woman who observed it was very much of the Victorian era that she is remem- the Telling a product of her times, and that fact bered only by her husband's name. She definitely affected why and how she married Arthur Pennee (or Penny) in Hauntings on Prince Edward Island reported what she saw. There is, then, 1850. He appears to have been one of have a habit of happening to someone more than one story to be told here. The those Victorian gentlemen of indeter- else, at indefinable times, in houses first concerns the narrator. minate occupation. In the summer of that no longer exist or locales that have 1855, he brought his wife and servant changed utterly. The ghost stories are to Prince Edward Island. Six years handed down and around and embel- The Ghost Writer and Her Times later they moved on to St. Anne de lished and refined until they are as Beaupre, Quebec. much art as history. They become the The haunting at Binstead was re- William George Ward spent his de- stuff of folklore — and very important counted by Mrs. Arthur Pennee, a clining years at his estate, Weston 8IHOL* Corns Two Ctam the SPR's activities was the systematic collection of case histories from per- sons that had encountered apparitions firsthand. Each was carefully classi- EMBER 28, 1889. VOL. 25.-NO. 150 fied and analyzed. Among them was Mrs. Pennee's account of the Binstead A Eeai Ghost! capital farmer. * It was he who added all the haunting. back wing of the house and made the nece* sary division*, &c, fur farming the land. He Pennee's testimony was published in The English Society for Psychical Re- had two sisters in his service, the daughter* the SPR's Proceedings for July, 1889 as search is still vigorously pursuing its inves- of a laborer who lived in a regular hovel part of a report somewhat ponderously tigations and is about to publish Part XV. about three miles nearer town. After a time titled "On Recognized Apparitions of its proceedings, containing articles on each sister gave birth to a boy. Vcryfittle can be learned of the domestic ar- Occuring More than a Year after apparitions duplex personality, seances Death." On November. 28, 1889, the with the celebrated medium, D. D. Home, rangemetrtsTsince Pigott bore so bad a name that &.c. The following case comes from Mr. the hoa*e was avoided by respeotable people; Charlottetown Daily Examiner pub- but i' ic cert. >n that one sister and one baby lished the account verbatim (with a Wilfrid Ward (and Lord Tennyson, for disappeared uhogether, though when ai.d how whom it was first committed to writing is a complete mystery. short introduction) under the headline some years ago). It was sent by Mrs. When the other baby wss between one and "A Real Ghost!". Peunec, of St. Anne de Beaupre, Quebec, two yea;sold Pigot Hold Binstead to an Eng- As befits a report to a scientific daughter of the late William Ward (a Con- lish gentleman n.-uried Fellowes, from whom society, Mrs. Pennee's account is rela- pcrvatne M. P. for London), and sister of we hired it, with the intention of eventually tively straightforward, even under- the late Rev. A. B. Ward, of Cambridge^ buying it. The othei Riater returned to her SHWATER, Ialeof Wight, father's house, and leaving the baby with Mrs. stated. Only in seeking to explain what WEST*** Newbury, her mother, went to the States en 1 she observed does she slip into lurid has never re*' ^ *J Before leaving she would *.t my husband Victorian melodrama. This is what the that *h« bov "'as her Daily Examiner published: "A Real Ghost!" was front-page news in the November 28,1889 Examiner. A Real Ghost! Manor, near Freshwater on the Isle of inclined to be cautious, but they were It was in the year 1856 that my hus- Wight, where he lived, his biographer ready to believe. band took me to live at a house called states, "in the intimate society of his The SPR tackled its self-appointed Binstead, about five miles from Char- near neighbour", Alfred, Lord Tenny- task with tremendous energy during lottetown, Prince Edward Island. It son, English Poet Laureate. It was the 1880s, investigating several catego- was a good sized house, and at the back while visiting her family there, in 1884, ries of psychic phenomena (and expos- had been considerably extended to that Mrs. Pennee wrote her account of ing many frauds in the process). One of allow of extra offices, since there were the haunting at Binstead, reputedly at Lord Tennyson's own request. A few years later, W. G. Ward's son, Wilfrid, forwarded her testimony to the Eng- lish Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Her story served to fatten its growing files on psychic phenomena. Established in 1882, the Society for Psychical Research was dominated by a group of distinguished scholars and scientists who bound themselves "to examine without prejudice or prepos- session and in a scientific spirit those :<? •'', M faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothesis." Among its early members, the Society also counted notables like Prime Min- m ister W. E. Gladstone, future Prime Minister Arthur J. Balfour—and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Their prestige and the professional reputations of the SPR's investigators lent the Society a neces- sary measure of credibility. Although its approach was self- consciously scientific, the SPR's inspir- ation was essentially religious. Dis- tressed at how recent scientific develop- ments were undermining orthodox 1 religion, many of the Society's founders sought to employ scientific methods to demonstrate that the world was gov- "I found myself face to face with a woman. She had a baby on her left arm, a check erned by other forces than just the shawl crossed over her bosom, and all around her shone a bright, pleasant light, physical laws of matter and motion.