Lil
speaker
737 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Lil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
An orb-topped stone gateway into a courtyard in the right angle of the building offers a tantalising peek into what may lay beyond, with at least a dozen rooms apparent from the windows just on this side of the wing alone, whilst behind the crook of the front wall is a curious feature that wouldn't look out of place on Disney's Haunted Mansion ride.
It's hard to tell if the lichen-encrusted stonework is actually part of the gabled-end wall, or if it is simply resting up against it. But the carved double arch, standing about the height of two gravestones side by side, and not looking a million miles away from such a thing...
bears two intricately carved heads, leering from the stone in full 3D, their necks craning right out of a picture-frame-like oval in the stone, their faces set in stern grimaces. On one hand, I half expect them to jerk to life and start singing a jaunty song, and on the other, they rather remind me of Dr Ripley's ghost, poking its head out the window and leering down at passers-by.
I can't help but wonder what the story is behind these two carvings. But then Bagdale Hall is a place full of mystery, swashbuckling stories and, of course, ghosts. Stories about the hauntings within the walls of Bagdale Hall have been emerging for decades, if not centuries.
Staff and servants over the years have related hearing disembodied footsteps all over the house, but especially on the wide wooden central staircase, where the creak of ghostly footsteps tread with some regularity.
The chilling sounds of children playing has been reported just after midnight, emanating from dark, empty rooms, as well as unexplained noises from the kitchen and the sounds of crashing coming from the china cabinet. Over the years, the hall changed ownership and eventually went out of private residence and into service as a hotel. But the noises continued.
the sound of bells ringing in the kitchen long after things like servants' bells had ceased being used, the phantom crashing from the china cabinet, apparently continuing even after the cabinet itself had been moved to a different location. Many of the reports from staff were related to an owner who took over the hall in 1914, a retired headmaster called Percy Shaw Jeffery.
During his ownership, one visiting local photographer had the fright of his life when he witnessed a piece of crockery inexplicably fly from a cabinet and, turning to look in the direction of the stairs, saw the ephemeral figure of a woman in white dissolve right before his eyes.
When a maid of Shaw Jefferies told him that a duster had flown out of her hand towards the kitchen while she had been cleaning the library, he simply replied, that things like that happen quite often at Bagdale Hall. And if that sounds rather nonchalant, then it's probably because Shaw Jeffery was no stranger to the world of the strange and supernatural.
Not only did he actually write a book on it, penning the title Whitby Law and Legend in 1923, but he also had a connection to a very famous paranormal case indeed, the haunting of Borley Rectory.
Long before he retired from his career as a headmaster and took up residence in Whitby, Percy Shaw Geoffrey became among the first of the witnesses of the strange happenings at Borley Rectory, during visits there to stay with his college friend Harry, or Henry as he was better known, who was the son of Reverend Ball, rector of the parish of Borley.
Percy and his friend the Rector's son both reportedly had a multitude of inexplicable experiences at the home. In an article titled The Mysteries of Borley Rectory that he wrote for the Cape Times in later years, Percy wrote...
The rectory was a comparatively new building, but it was generally believed that it was built on the foundations of an old convent, which accounted for the ghostly nun, who or which I saw several times. The ghostly coach and four I heard sweep down the much too narrow lane beside the rectory so often that I used to sleep through the noise, and a variety of disconcerting incidents happened.
And Percy went into even more detail about his visits in a letter to investigator Harry Price after reading Price's book about the supernatural happenings at the rectory. Dear Mr Price, I have just been reading your book about Borley Rectory. I'm very interested because Harry Bull and I were born in the same year, 1862.
We went to Oxford together and in the long vacations I used to go and stay with him at Borley. I had lots of small adventures at the rectory, stones falling about, my boots found on top of the wardrobe, etc., and I saw the nun several times and often heard the coach go clattering by.
But the big adventure that would have been worth your while recording was one time when I missed a big French dictionary which I had been regularly using for some days. Nobody could find it. But one night, I was awakened by a big bump on the floor, and there was the dictionary, with its back a good deal knocked about, sprawling on the floor. My bedroom door was locked.
With all these paranormal adventures occurring in his youth, maybe it's no wonder Percy Shaw Jeffrey was a little nonchalant about a mysteriously animated duster. But Percy wasn't the only owner of Bagdale Hall to experience the unexplained, and the reports of strange activity continued even into the post-war years when the hall became a hotel.
A waitress working at Bagdale was surprised one night when the chef asked her why no one was attending to a gentleman in the dining room. Perplexed, the waitress asked the chef, ''What gentleman?'' Looking again, the chef was shocked to discover that she was correct. The dining room where he was certain he had seen a man seated only moments before was empty.
In recent years, another maid had quite the scare whilst changing the sheets in one of the hotel's bedrooms. Hearing noise behind her, she jumped around, startled, only to come face to face with a ghostly figure in old-fashioned clothes.
So frightened that she had to look away from the figure, yet more shock awaited her, as she looked back to the bed to discover that the sheets she had just laid out there had mysteriously vanished.
Showing 521–540 of 737 · page 27 of 37
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