The Society for the Investigation of Spectral Phenomena
Inquisition on Six Wanderers Folded Away at Shripney
Bognor Regis War Memorial Hospital, hospital, Bognor Regis, West Sussex
I.Background & History
Bognor Regis War Memorial Hospital is a health facility in Shripney Road, Bognor Regis, West Sussex, England. It is managed by Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust. The dossier supplied to the Society records nothing further of its foundation or its fabric, and the Society will not invent what it has not been told.
The town lies on the Sussex coast, and the hospital stands a little inland of the sea front, in the flat country of the coastal plain where lanes run out towards the villages. The name it bears is the common one given to houses raised in remembrance of the fallen. The Society observes only that such a house is, by its purpose, a place built to hold the absent in mind.
II.The Entity
The Hurdle Collie
A lean grey sheepdog, rough-coated and sodden as though just drawn from a ditch, which advances always tail-first with its head dragged low and turned back over its own flank. It makes no sound and casts a shadow that falls toward the lamp instead of away from it. Its eyes are fixed not upon the person it drives, but upon the place where that person will presently be standing.
Assessment of Peril
Class IV: Malignant
The Society holds record of six persons who followed the Collie across the threshold of the inverted house, of whom none came out by the door they entered. It attends those who have remarked upon it, and has been known to circle a sceptic for an entire night without once approaching him.
III.The Account
The Society's file opens in November 1844, when the coroner for the Rape sat in the long room of a public house to take evidence touching the disappearance of a drover, Thomas Hurrell, whose flock had been found penned in the corner of a field beside the Shripney lane, counted, quiet, and facing the wall of the hedge as sheep do not. The following is extracted from the transcript. CORONER: 'You saw no dog?' MR. SAMUEL VOKINS, carter: 'I saw a dog, sir, but it came backward. It was driving the flock, but it was in front of them, and it never turned its head toward the way it went. It went in at a gap in the hedge where there is no gap, and the lane behind it was changed.' CORONER: 'Changed how?' MR. VOKINS: 'Turned inside out, sir, like a coat. The hedge was in the middle of the road and the lamps hung down from nothing, and there was a long room beyond with no living thing in it.' [Annotation: the Society has no record of any building on that ground in 1844. The witness was not asked what he meant by a room.]
The jury returned an open verdict. The annotator remarks that the drover's own dog, a grey bitch named Gipsy, was found at dusk the next day lying across the threshold of Hurrell's cottage, quite dry, with her paws crossed before her and her head turned toward her tail. She would take no food. She died within the week, and the labourer who buried her declared that she was lighter than a dog should be, and that the earth he put over her was warm.
In later years, when the ground was built upon and a house for the sick was raised there, the same inversion was deposed to at three several inquests, always between the small hours and the grey before dawn. At the inquest of 1923 upon a night porter, Mr. Alfred Cuss, a nurse, MISS EDITH ROWSELL, gave this evidence. CORONER: 'He went in by the side door?' MISS ROWSELL: 'He followed a dog, sir. He said so himself, calling back to me. I saw nothing, but I heard him say, now the wards are empty, Nurse, the beds are all turned to the wall, and there is somebody laid out on the floor between them. And then he said that the dog had stopped, and was looking at the place where he stood.' [Annotation: Mr. Cuss was found at five o'clock sitting upright upon the front step, quite cold, with his lantern lit and burning downward. The medical evidence was heart failure. The nurse left the service within the month and was afterwards unwilling to be in a room with a dog.]
The Society's own investigator, Mr. Barnabas Orrin, sat the matter out on a night in March 1931 in the corridor of the hospital, in company with a sceptical physician, Dr. Pelham Dray, who had undertaken to hold the door. At ten minutes after three Dr. Dray deposed that the corridor ran the wrong way, that the doors he had known stood on his left stood now on his right, and that a grey dog had passed him, tail foremost, with its eyes on the spot behind his chair. Mr. Orrin rose, and said that he would follow it for a few yards. He was heard to call out, from a long way off, the number of the doors he passed; he called seven, and then a number the physician would not repeat. The doors, locked from without, stood open at dawn. Mr. Orrin's boots were set side by side upon the threshold, laced, and quite dry. Dr. Dray, upon being asked at the inquest why he had not followed, replied that the dog had not been looking at him, and that he had understood by this that his turn was not yet come.
IV.Recorded Manifestations
- ✦Corridors whose doors are hung upon the opposite side, and whose numbers run backward.
- ✦A smell of wet wool and cold carbolic, noticed an instant before the dog is seen.
- ✦Lamps burning with the flame pointing downward, and the oil unspilled.
- ✦The sound of a slow, soft circling in an empty ward, as of a beast walking round a fold.
- ✦Shadows lying toward the light in any room where the Collie has lately passed.
- ✦Persons found standing quite still at dawn with their shoes upon the wrong feet and no memory of the hour.
Testimony of Witnesses
“"It came backward, sir, and it drove the sheep from in front of them. I never saw a dog keep its eyes on nothing so steadily as that one kept them on the place I was about to stand."”
“"I heard him say the dog had stopped. I heard him say it was looking at his feet. After that I heard the door, and it was a good while before I heard anything else."”
“"I am a man of method, and I recorded the hour. It passed me within a yard and did not look at me once. I understood that I had been counted over and let go, and I have not slept easily since."”
V.Rite of Expulsion
Difficulty: Inadvisable
Requisites
- ☐A shepherd's crook, unpeeled and of ash wood
- ☐A length of undyed wool, wound upon a spindle
- ☐A bowl of plain water, set upon the floor
- ☐A tallow candle, never before lit
- ☐A looking-glass, covered, to be carried face inward
The Rite
Caution.
VI.Hauntings of the Surrounding District
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Our Lady of Sorrows Church · Church · 0.6 miles
The Damp-Veiled Bride, white lady. A pale bride kneels in the vestry on the anniversary of a wedding that never took place, and any who speak to her hear their own banns read aloud.
Nyetimber Mill · Old Mill · 2.7 miles
The Flour-White Ram, spectral animal. A pale ram stands in the mill-yard at moonrise, and millers who have turned their backs on it are found with their hands full of wool.
Bilsham Chapel · Church · 2.6 miles
The Shuttered-Lamp Pewkeeper, spectre. A figure sits in the last pew with a shuttered lamp, and the congregation numbers one more than the roll.
St George's Church · Church · 3.2 miles
Sexton Hobb's Spade, revenant. A spade is heard turning earth in the churchyard before a burial, and the grave dug by it is always the length of the man who hears it.
Yapton Free Church · Church · 3.3 miles
The Hymn-Board Rapper, poltergeist. The numbers on the hymn board change in the night to those of hymns never sung there, and the pews are found wet.
Selsey Abbey · Abbey · 4.7 miles
The Drowned Cantors, phantom procession. A chanting choir of monks is heard walking the shore at ebb, and the sea hushes to let them pass.
Norton Priory · Abbey · 4.8 miles
The Cowled Almoner, headless apparition. A monk with an empty hood carries a purse through the priory ground and sets a coin upon the eyes of those who sleep there.
St Leodegar's Church · Church · 4.4 miles
The Rood-Shadow, unclassified entity. A long shadow cast by a crucifix that is no longer there falls across the chancel floor at noon and is cold to the hand.
John Baker's Mill · Old Mill · 3.2 miles
The Millpond Candle, will-o'-the-wisp. A yellow flame bobs along the pond bank at dusk, leading belated carters toward the deep water.
St Andrew's Church · Church · 4.3 miles
The Borrowed Verger, possession. A verger wakes each Sunday speaking in a voice not his own, reciting names from a register that was burned centuries ago.
St Wilfrid's Chapel · Church · 4.7 miles
The Pebble-Hurler of the Chapel Wall, poltergeist. Shingle rains upon the chapel roof on windless nights, and each stone is found warm in the morning and engraved with a worshipper's initials.
Boxgrove Priory · Abbey · 4.9 miles
The Mason of the Half-Cut Arch, spectre. A grey stonemason is seen chiselling in the ruined arcade, and the stones he cuts bear the faces of the watchers.
St Mary's Church · Church · 4.2 miles
The Chalk-Faced Churching Woman, white lady. A woman in a wet shawl stands at the lychgate with a bundle that is cold and weighs nothing, and begs that it be christened.
Bailiffscourt Chapel · Church · 4.2 miles
The Salt-Bound Crusader, revenant. A knight in rusted mail rises from the chapel floor at the turn of the tide, and the flagstones sweat brine where he lay.
St Richard of Chichester Church · Church · 5.2 miles
The Taper-Eyed Owl, spectral animal. A great white owl perches on the porch gable with eyes like two lit tapers, and a death follows in the parish within the week.