The Society for the Investigation of Spectral Phenomena
A Night Beside the Altered Mr. Venn
Castlemead, castle, Bristol, Bristol
I.Background & History
Castlemead is a high-rise commercial office building on Lower Castle Street, beside Castle Park in Bristol. Eighteen storeys and eighty metres in height, seventeen of them given over to offices, it was completed in 1981 and stood as the tallest building in the city until Castle Park View surpassed it in 2020.
The ground it occupies lies within the old castle quarter, a district thick with the sites of abbeys, friaries, chapels and a former gaol, and the Society has long held that such ground keeps what is put into it. The Society's interest in the spot concerns the years before the present tower, when other, narrower buildings stood upon it, and nothing in the record attaches to the modern structure itself.
Source: Castlemead, Wikipedia
II.The Entity
The Cuckoo Brother
It wears the body of Mr. Edmund Venn, a ledger clerk of middle height, and wears it a little too carefully, like a glove drawn on by someone who has only had gloves described to them. Its shadow falls a half-second behind its movements and sometimes toward the lamp. In the small hours its face is observed to slacken wholly, as a coat slips from a peg, until it remembers to put the features back.
Assessment of Peril
Class IV: Malignant
It does not strike or burn; it learns, and each person it learns from is afterwards found to be fractionally less themselves. Two persons of the household were taken from the street within the year, and an officer of the Society did not return from the vigil.
III.The Account
NINE O'CLOCK. In the winter of 1934 the Society's Mr. Harcourt Lisle was admitted to a narrow house in Lower Castle Street by Miss Ada Venn, a schoolmistress of thirty-one, who put to him a single complaint: that her brother Edmund, a ledger clerk, had not been Edmund since Michaelmas 1932. The household, consisting of a widowed mother, a younger sister and a lodging nephew, thought him improved. He was more courteous, he no longer sulked, and he ate whatever was set before him. Miss Venn said that this was exactly the fault. Mr. Lisle took the chair on the landing, with a view of the brother's door, and wrote that the house smelled faintly of wet stone, as of a ditch.
MIDNIGHT. Mr. Edmund Venn came down for water and passed Mr. Lisle with a civil nod. Mr. Lisle records that the man's shadow, cast by the landing gas, reached the stair a half-second after the man had passed it, and that it did not hurry. Returning, Mr. Venn paused and spoke, in an exact imitation of the widowed mother's voice, the sentence she had said at supper: 'Mind the third stair.' He seemed to wait for it to be approved. Then he said it again, in the sister's voice, and then in his own, which was the worst of the three, for it was a little better than the original.
TWO O'CLOCK. Mr. Lisle followed the sound of rehearsal to the kitchen and watched through the crack of the door. Mr. Venn sat before the dead range, quite upright, and spoke in turn as each member of his family, working at the vowels as a man works at a lock. At each voice the face moved, and between voices it did not move at all, but hung slack and wide and patient, like a mask on a nail. Miss Venn, at Mr. Lisle's elbow, whispered that he had been practising her this fortnight, and that her mother had lately begun to hum as he hums. Mr. Lisle wrote at this point, in a hand that is no longer quite steady, that he could not account for the smell of the ditch.
FOUR O'CLOCK. The thing in the kitchen turned its head, though no board had creaked, and addressed Mr. Lisle by his Christian name, which he had given to nobody in the house. It said he had a pleasing voice. Mr. Lisle's entry breaks here and resumes in pencil: 'It has begun on me. I hear myself clear my throat and do not choose to.' Miss Venn took the lamp and led him to the area steps, where the damp wall of the old foundations had been disturbed, and from behind two loose courses of stone came a steady, patient knocking, such as a man makes who has been knocking for two years and has learned not to hope.
DAWN. When the maid arrived at seven she found the household at breakfast, the mother humming, the sister and the nephew eating, and Mr. Edmund Venn pouring tea. Miss Venn was at her place with her hands in her lap and her eyes open, smiling a little too exactly. Mr. Lisle's hat and notebook lay upon the landing chair, and the area wall had been neatly repointed. The maid remarked only that the master of the house had never looked so well. The Society's inquiries trace neither Mr. Lisle nor the nephew beyond that date.
IV.Recorded Manifestations
- ✦A smell of wet stone and standing ditch-water, strongest upon the landing and the area steps.
- ✦A shadow that follows its owner by half a second and sometimes leans toward the lamp.
- ✦Family sentences repeated in the household's own voices, each improved upon at each repetition.
- ✦A slow, patient knocking from the old foundations behind the area wall.
- ✦Persons near the entity beginning to hum, clear their throats or smile as it does.
Testimony of Witnesses
“'I sold Ned Venn his boot-nails every month for ten years, and in October he bought them as if he had read about it. He thanked me twice. Ned never thanked anybody once.'”
“'The whole house took on one face, miss. I carried the sheets in and there was the old lady, the girl and the master, all smiling alike, and not one of them blinking when I did.'”
“'The cellar wall of that house was stopped up fresh, and I put my ear to it, being a fool. Something on the far side tapped three times, very civilly, and then I heard it clear its throat in my own voice.'”
V.Rite of Expulsion
Difficulty: Perilous
Requisites
- ☐A tallow candle, never to be relit once snuffed
- ☐A looking-glass wrapped in black crape
- ☐A bowl of water from a running source
- ☐A list of the household in the hand of the one who first noticed
- ☐A new key, never turned in any lock
The Rite
- I.1. Begin at the stroke of two, when the thing is rehearsing, and speak to none of the household until it has finished.
- II.2. Place the crape-covered glass upon the kitchen table facing the range, and do not unveil it until the fourth step.
- III.3. Read the household list aloud, but in a voice that is plainly your own, flat and uncoloured, and permit no echo to be corrected.
- IV.4. Unveil the glass and ask the one in the chair its name, three times, and do not answer when it answers in your voice.
- V.5. Carry the new key to the area wall, set it upon the stone, and knock thrice in the manner of one who expects to be answered.
- VI.6. Pour the water over the sill of the foundations and walk away without looking back or humming.
Caution. Never reply to the thing in the first voice that it borrows from you. Mr. Harcourt Lisle of this Society answered it once, at four o'clock, and has since been seen only in the habits of other persons.
VI.Hauntings of the Surrounding District
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New Bridewell Tower · Former Gaol · 0.4 miles
The Turnkey's Train, phantom procession. At the hour of locking, a line of shuffling figures in irons is heard crossing the yard, and one more step is counted than there are feet.
Blackfriars · Abbey · 0.1 miles
The Black Friar of the Frater, spectre. A tall brother in dark habit sits at the end of the long table, and anyone who sits opposite finds their own hands have folded in prayer.
Bristol Castle · Castle · 0.2 miles
The Ditch-Garrison, revenant. Soldiers stand in the old moat in water that is not there, and each one turns to face whoever looks longest.
St James' Presbyterian Church of England · Ruins · 0.3 miles
The Roofless Bride, white lady. She appears in the open nave where the glass has gone, in a gown that stays dry in the heaviest rain.
Sack Friary · Abbey · 0.3 miles
The Sackcloth Heifer, spectral animal. A pale, drooping beast is seen in the friary ground at dusk, and it is said to follow home anyone who pats it.
Temple Church · Ruins · 0.4 miles
The Tower-Leaner, headless apparition. A headless man in a weaver's apron is seen resting against the leaning wall, his neck turning toward passers-by though nothing sits upon it.
Horfield United Reformed Church · Church · a few paces
The Hymn-Board Hand, poltergeist. Numbers are rearranged on the board in the night, always to the number of the person who will next be buried.
Central Quaker Meeting House · Church · 0.1 miles
The Silence at the Bench, unclassified entity. A hush settles in the meeting room that does not lift when the meeting ends, and those who sit in it a long while forget their names.
St Philip and St Jacob · Church · 0.1 miles
The Lych-Lamp, will-o'-the-wisp. A small blue light bobs among the headstones at dusk, and it leads the unwary toward the old river wall.
Kingsley Hall · Manor House · 0.2 miles
The Hearthstone Lurcher, phantom hound. A thin grey dog lies before the cold fireplace every winter, and its breath is warm upon the ankle of whoever stands too near.
John Wesley's New Room · Church · 0.2 miles
The Saddlebag Preacher, spectre. A damp, tired figure is heard praying aloud in the upper room, and the voice, when it ends, goes on in the listener's own throat.
St Jude's Church · Church · 0.2 miles
The Sexton's Understudy, revenant. A man in a gravedigger's cap is seen opening the same vault, and the ground within is found each time to be freshly turned.
St Peter's Hospital · Hospital · 0.2 miles
The Almoner's Fever, possession. Patients on the old wards wake speaking in the words of those who died in the same bed, and are not themselves again for days.
Broadmead Baptist Church · Church · 0.3 miles
The Font-Rapper, poltergeist. Three slow knocks are made from beneath the baptistery floor, and the water in the tank is found disturbed at dawn.
St Paul's Church · Church · 0.3 miles
The Candle-Bearers of Portland Square, phantom procession. A silent line of mourners with unlit tapers passes the railings before a funeral, and every taper is lit by the time the cart arrives.