VICAR'S GHOST STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20088, 27 October 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

VICAR'S GHOST STORY.

WRAITH IN BEDROOM.

"BENEFICENT 'PRESENCE."

REMARKABLE • EXPERIENCES

Ghosts have begun to. appear in the brideless Middlesex villago of South Mimms, but thoy aro not tho ghosts of disappointed spinsters. They are kindly wraiths, who seem to bear no ill-will against the folk they choose to visit. Tho vicar, tho Rev. Allen Hay, bears witness to their beneficent influence.

Chatting with him recently in his halfdemolished 14th century vicarage, he confessed readily to tho writer that ho believed in gliosis, but, ho added, " Not in vulgar ghosts." Among this degenerate type ho placed thoso whoso chief business is to terrify, lie has 110 credulity for tho revengeful ghost, either. " I have not seen tho vicarage ghost," Mr. Hay said, " but 1 luivo felt its presence. I have awakened several times at 3 a.m. and been instantly conscious of its beneficent presence. I have felt its benevolence, and was so easy in my mind that I soon dropped off to sleep again. " My wifo has had the samo sort of experience. Several friends who have

slept in the same room havo also remarked on precisely tho same experience, although quite unaware that my wife and I had shared it. After all, why should there not bo visitations from the invisible spiritual world all about us? I believe spirits do visit places to which thev were attached in tho flesh,.

" One of my parishioners, Miss- Long, told mo some time ago that she had seen a man praying in tho priest's stall in the chancel, and she watched him, mystified by his presence there in tho afternoon. Suddenly the figure disappeared through tho closed door leading to tho vestry. Miss Long described him to me, and her description exactly fitted mv predecessor here, a man whom she had never seen. Then caino tho news that ho had died a few days previously in Bournemouth. It is not incredible to me that my predecessor should come Lack in spirit to the place lie loved." But Mr. Hav said that one ghost lie had seen on " The Wash"—a strip of marshy land adjoining the village—" made my hair stand on fend. It rode bestYl me when I was cycling homo at 11 o'clock one night, a black-clothed, fear-inspiring figure. I have never ridden so desperately hard in my life as then." Part of the bone of a human lee; has been found in tho course of demolishing the ancient vicarage of South Minims. Mr. Gowar, a medical student, has taken it to Middlesex Hospital for examination. The vicar found it under the flow of what used to bo tho drawing room. "But

I am not going to say there is any connection between it and tho vicarase ghost," ho said. Tho inevitable " (all woman in grev" and a nocturnal wanderer on "Tho Wasn" arc other apparitions said to havo been seon recently in this locality.