The Society for the Investigation of Spectral Phenomena
Correspondence Concerning the Brine-Footed Dead of Climping Strand
Bailiffscourt Chapel, church, Climping, West Sussex
I.Background & History
Bailiffscourt Chapel is a deconsecrated chapel in the grounds of Bailiffscourt, near Atherington and Climping in West Sussex. Founded in the eleventh century and associated with the Norman Abbey of Séez, it was rebuilt in its present plain Gothic form in the thirteenth century.
It afterwards fell out of use, but when the former church of Atherington was destroyed by coastal erosion the chapel served again for public worship, and as late as 1952 was a chapel of ease. It stands on the only stretch of open seafront land for miles in either direction, beside a mansion raised in 1935 on the site of an ancient manor house. It is listed Grade II*.
Source: Bailiffscourt Chapel, Wikipedia
II.The Entity
The Tide-Wrack Reeve
A tall figure in the sodden tabard of a manorial officer, its hair and beard hung with bladderwrack and its skin the grey-white of a drowned thing long in the water. It leaves wet prints across dry boards, each filled with brine, and the smell of weed and low tide goes before it for a quarter-mile inland. Witnesses agree that its mouth is always a little open, and that one hears the surf within it.
Assessment of Peril
Class IV: Malignant
The Reeve has twice been followed by the deaths of those who answered its summons, each found in a dry room with lungs full of salt water. It singles out whoever has written of it, and its attentions advance by degrees.
III.The Account
The Society's file opens with a letter dated the ninth of November, 1724, from Mr. Josiah Pellow, a churchwarden of Climping, who wrote in a cramped and hurried hand to ask whether the Society's predecessors kept any learning on 'a wetness that comes to the chapel without rain'. He had found the floor before the altar dark with seawater on a morning of hard frost, though the sea lay a furlock off and the door was barred. Across the wet ran the prints of two bare feet, going in and not coming out. The Secretary replied advising him to take note of the hour, and to sleep elsewhere.
Mr. Pellow's second letter, in January 1725, is quoted in full in the minute book. The tide, he wrote, had begun to come to him. The smell of weed and mud lay in his parlour three miles from the shore, and in the night he heard the long drag of surf beneath the floor. The prints now crossed his own boards, one pair, wet, toes toward the bed, and they were fresh each morning though he had sanded the floor. He had enquired among the old people, who spoke of a reeve of the manor who, in the time of the abbey's lands, was sent down to the strand to gather wreck and was taken by the sea in a night of storm. The chapel bell, it was said, had rung for him though nobody was in the tower. He asked, with evident shame, whether it was proper to pray for a man who might not yet know himself dead.
IV.Recorded Manifestations
- ✦The smell of weed and low tide, noticed up to a quarter-mile inland and strongest at the turn of the night.
- ✦Wet bare footprints across dry boards, always heading inward and never leaving, each filled with brine.
- ✦The sound of surf beneath floors, heard by the sleeper and not by the waker beside him.
- ✦Written pages found damp at morning, the ink run to a blue shadow.
- ✦The chapel bell stirring faintly when no wind blows and no hand is at the rope.
- ✦A taste of salt upon the lips of those who speak its name aloud.
Testimony of Witnesses
“I had gone to dig by lantern and found the nave wet to the ankle with the sea, and a long man stood at the altar rail with his back to me. When I coughed, he began to turn, and I did not wait to see his face.”
“My husband said it was the damp. But I saw the marks come up the garden path, one foot after another, and stop at our door, and the latch was wet in the morning.”
“I attended three persons at Climping who had every sign of drowning and had not been near water. The third, before he died, asked me if the tide was in.”
V.Rite of Expulsion
Difficulty: Perilous
Requisites
- ☐A bowl of dry salt, taken from a house that has never been near the sea
- ☐A tallow candle that has not been lit before
- ☐A length of unbleached cloth, dry and folded
- ☐A small handbell of plain iron
- ☐A clean slate and a stub of chalk
The Rite
- I.Attend the chapel on the ebb of the tide, at the hour the almanack gives for low water, and bar the door from within.
- II.Lay the cloth before the altar and set upon it the bowl of salt, and light the candle with a single match.
- III.Ring the iron bell thrice, slowly, then lay it face down, and do not take it up again.
- IV.Write upon the slate the words 'Thy account is closed', in plain hand, and show it to the empty nave.
- V.Strew the salt in a line from the altar to the door, saying nothing, though the floor grow wet beneath you.
- VI.Extinguish the candle with the fingers, not the breath, and leave without turning your head.
Caution. You must not answer if you are called by name, nor look behind you at any time before the door is open. The Society's Mr. Garrod turned at the third step, and was taken from the shore at Bognor nine days later, wholly dry, and without any breath in him.
VI.Hauntings of the Surrounding District
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Slayer's Slab · Tomb · 2.7 miles
The Slab-Sitter, spectre. A heavy figure is seen seated upon the stone at dusk, and those who pass it find their shadows lying the wrong way.
St Catherine's Church · Church · 1.8 miles
The Wick-Trimmer, white lady. A woman in a pale shift walks the aisle at midnight trimming candles that are not there, and those she passes feel their own breath snuffed.
Littlehampton Friends Meeting House · Church · 1.9 miles
The Bench-Knocker, poltergeist. Unseen hands rap upon the plain benches in the long silence, and the rapping answers any question put to it, always with the date of the questioner's death.
Bilsham Chapel · Church · 2.0 miles
The Pale Ram of Bilsham, spectral animal. A fleece-white ram stands within the chapel at dusk with its head too low, and has no eyes.
Lyminster Priory · Abbey · 2.7 miles
The Candle-Cowled Sisters, phantom procession. Hooded women pass the priory wall in a file of seven, bearing lit tapers that give no light, and the lane behind them is found frosted in July.
Yapton Free Church · Church · 2.2 miles
The Borrowed Cadence, possession. The congregant who sits in a certain pew begins to speak in a stranger's voice, praying for a soul that has not yet died.
St Mary Magdalene's Church · Church · 2.5 miles
The Magdalene Almsman, headless apparition. A beggar with no head crosses the churchyard bearing a bowl, and the coin dropped in it is never heard to land.
Poling Preceptory · Templar Preceptory · 4.1 miles
The Mantled Brother, revenant. A knight in a white mantle rises from the preceptory field each Martinmas, and walks the hedges counting the living by touch.
Arundel Blackfriars · Abbey · 4.0 miles
The Grey Lector, unclassified entity. A voice reads from the empty refectory pulpit in a language no scholar has named, and those who learn its words do not wake.
John Baker's Mill · Old Mill · 2.8 miles
The Flour-Dog, phantom hound. A mealy white hound pads about the millstones at night, leaving a trail of pale dust, and the miller who follows it is never found.
Arundel Castle · Castle · 4.1 miles
The Rampart Chandler, spectre. A thin man in a leather apron walks the battlements with a taper, and the sentry whose face he lights is changed by morning.
Zachary Merton Hospital · Hospital · 3.5 miles
The Starched Matron, white lady. A nurse in an old-fashioned cap stands at the foot of beds in the small hours, and the patient she regards does not see the dawn.
St Mary's Church · Church · 3.6 miles
The Lych-Lamp, will-o'-the-wisp. A pale blue flame drifts between the graves and leads belated walkers off the path toward the ditch.
St Nicholas Church · Church · 3.6 miles
The Pew-Scraper, poltergeist. Heavy pews are dragged across the nave floor each night, and are found in the morning arranged in a ring about one empty place.
Arundel and District Hospital · Hospital · 3.9 miles
The Ward-Cat, spectral animal. A grey cat walks the corridors and settles upon the beds of the dying, and its weight is felt before it is seen.
