Tim Robbins would agree.
Posted on 09/20/2004 4:51:37 PM PDT by lowbridge
Joanna's Absolutely haunted house
08:31am 20th September 2004
When Joanna Lumley first saw the beautiful 18th century Parsonage, she felt sure it was the home for her. But a series of supernatural events changed her mind after she and her husband moved in.
The 58-year-old actress claims that during her three years at the house in Goodnestone, near Dover, she became convinced it was haunted after a series of extraordinary goings-on.
It began on the day she moved in when she was in the dimly-lit cellar and met what she assumed was an 'ancient' removal man. He thrust his face close to hers and growled to her: "Leave this place."
"He wore an old leather jerkin, the type that coalmen have, and a whitish shirt and a flat cap," she said.
"I couldn't see him very clearly by the dim light of the single bulb hanging on its stem."
Miss Lumley decided to report the man to his employers and pursued him upstairs but he had vanished.
"When I got up to the front drive where the removal lorry was parked there was no man dressed in that way, no man in a cap."
The star of TV's Absolutely Fabulous says she became increasingly distressed when she discovered lights turning themselves on and off, footsteps but no people, a freshly-dug grave that disappeared overnight, and gusts of coolness even on hot days.
She had a sense of being 'watched' and of someone "waiting for me to leave".
Then she discovered that MR James, the writer of ghost stories, had been born in the house in 1862. "I think the house had some effect on him," she said.
"Houses, like people, have their own characters and the impact of the character of the Parsonage was undeniable - thrilling but turbulent."
Miss Lumley viewed the house with husband Stephen Barlow, the opera director and conductor, on the day after the great storm in October 1987.
"We experienced many strangenesses," she writes in her latest volume of memoirs, No Room For Secrets.
"Lights that turned themselves on in the attic no matter how often we turned them off; footsteps across the big spare room when we had friends to lunch in the kitchen below.
Lights turned themselves on
"They all heard them but when Stephen went to look there was no one there.
"My watch vanished from the bedroom and was found in the wastepaper basket in the other end of the house."
She also discovered a secret tunnel led from the cellar to the nearby graveyard.
Miss Lumley, who in 1986 played the ghost Elvira in a West End production of Noel Coward's play Blithe Spirit, adds: "Once on a freezing night I was woken up by moonlight.
"I got out of bed and stood at the window, looking down on the rough grass below the soft tennis court, and saw a freshly dug grave. The earth was heaped up by the side ... there was no mistaking what it was. The next day it was gone."
As the actress sat alone one night, watching television, she claims a man in a white shirt passed the window in the darkness. She later realised the window was too high above the ground for anyone to walk past.
Chill
On other occasions a chill would descend. "Coldness would suddenly occur in the middle of a sunny day. Once the kitchen seemed to be filled with a great chilly darkness so I couldn't even see across the room.
"I could sense someone waiting or watching, hidden in the silence of empty stairs and landings, waiting for me to leave."
It finally became too much and she persuaded her husband they should sell up. But even then she was not left in peace.
When a family came to view the property she led them into the 'normally immaculate and cool' larder to find it "screaming with a cloud of bluebottles".
Miss Lumley says the family hurried out of the house and she returned to the larder with a dustpan and brush only to discover there was not a single fly.
"I went downstairs to the cellar and stood amongst the wood and coal and said very loudly, 'We're leaving.' At once the most delicious scent of roses filled the dark rooms, so thick and strong I almost fainted."
Miss Lumley is convinced it was delivered by the 'removal man' as a reward for leaving. "He gave me the scent of a thousand roses to thank me."
She now lives with her husband in a five-storey Victorian mansion in South London.
The current owner of the Parsonage, Alexandra Patrick, has lived there with her husband for two years but has not suffered ghostly goings-on.
She said: "Disappointingly things have not gone bump in the night. But the village gossip was all about ghosts. Maybe they liked Joanna more than us."
bump
Tim Robbins would agree.
Excellent!!!! Thanks for the ping.... I'll ping the others.
Ghost Ping!
Ghost Ping!!!
Thanks for the ping!
Thanks for the ghost story. I needed something to take my mind off of politics.
Don't thank me .... thank lowbridge for this one!
Thanks for the ping. It's nice to get away from politics for awhile.
But why would one family be haunted and the next left alone?
Thanks for the ping. Like someone else said, this stuff is great when you want to take a break from politics... (and we all need a break sometimes...)
"why would one family be haunted and the next left alone?"
Just a guess, but I think one's level of awareness is differnt from another's. Like sensitivity to pain or awareness of one's surroundings or perceptiveness (if that's a word). Some people are SO TOTALLY UNAWARE of their surroundings or how they impact others, so it must be in their awareness of the spiritual / spectral realm.
thanks to both of you! good read. I am surprised she stayed as long as she did.
"He thrust his face close to hers and growled to her: "Leave this place."
Good enough for me to say "Uh yes. I think I will leave right now. Bu-bye!"
Wasn't she in The Avengers?
Ella Enchanted 2003 Dame Olga
Standing Room Only 2002 A person in a queue
The Cat's Meow 2001 Elinor Glyn
Maybe Baby 2000 Sheila
Mad Cows 1999 Gillian
Parting Shots 1999 Fred
Prince Valiant 1998 Morgana le Fey
James and the Giant Peach 1996 Aunt Spiker
Innocent Lies 1995
Lady Helena Graves Girl Friday 1994 Desert Island Dish
A Ghost in Monte Carlo 1990 Lady Drayton
Shirley Valentine 1988 Marjorie
Curse of the Pink Panther 1983 Countess Chandra
Trail of the Pink Panther 1983 Marie Jouvet
The Satanic Rites of Dracula 1973 Jessica Van Helsing
Don't Just Lie There, Say Something 1973 Giselle Parkyn
The Breaking of Bumbo 1972 Susie
Games That Lovers Play 1971 Fanny Hill
Tam Lin 1969 Georgia
On Her Majesty's Secret Service 1969 The English Girl
Some Girls Do 1969 Uncredited part
You have a "fun" profile page. again, thanks for post.
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