The Society for the Investigation of Spectral Phenomena
Mother Trencher: A Confession Delivered Past Mending
Eastville Workhouse, former workhouse, Bristol, Bristol
I.Background & History
The Eastville Workhouse stood at 100 Fishponds Road, in Bristol. It was a workhouse in the plain sense of the word, an institution for the maintenance of the poor, and in the 1920s it was converted into a home for the elderly. It was demolished in 1972 to make way for housing.
The Society can vouch for no further particulars of the site. It lay in the eastern part of the city, and a number of churches and chapels stand within a short distance of it. The remainder of this file rests upon the confession of a single hand, which the Society received and has preserved without alteration.
Source: Eastville Workhouse, Wikipedia
II.The Entity
Mother Trencher
She is never seen entire, only in the person she has taken: a sitter at the table whose jaw works steadily upon nothing, whose voice has become a woman's hoarse whisper, and whose body thins by the hour while the food before them is not touched. In the lamplight the shadow of the possessed is seen to eat, bending to the board and lifting its hands, when the flesh itself sits perfectly still.
Assessment of Peril
Class IV: Malignant
While her trencher is set she takes only bread. When it is withheld she takes a living body for her table, and no person so taken has been recorded as recovering. Three inmates and one matron are known to the Society to have been lost to her.
III.The Account
I write this in the winter of 1927, as Matron of the home for the aged poor at Fishponds Road, and I write to the Society because I have no one else to tell, and because I have learned too late what I have done. I have found in the cupboard of the old master's room a bundle of papers in a hand of the last century, and the oldest leaf of them reads thus: that in the hard winter of 1662 a starving woman, a vagrant, came to a farmhouse on this ground and begged a crust at the door. The farmer's wife refused her. The woman sat down upon the step and was found there at morning, frozen, with her mouth open and her fingers crammed with the dirt she had been eating. The farmer's wife, in a terror she could not account for, set a wooden trencher of bread upon the step that same dusk. In the morning the trencher was bare, wiped, and warm to the hand.
The custom was kept. When the parish raised its house for the poor upon the farm's ground, the first master laid a trencher of bread and a bowl of thin gruel upon the threshold at every dusk, entered in no book and spoken of to no inspector. The papers name the cost of it year upon year, a loaf and a pint, and beside it, in different inks, a column of names: inmates who refused their food and were found sitting at the long table in the small hours with their jaws moving upon nothing, whispering in a hoarse woman's voice, and who were dead within the week. The masters wrote of her only as 'the Mother at the board.' None of them wrote why she must be fed. They knew only that she must.
I did not believe it. I will set down my arrogance plainly. In the autumn of this year the Guardians pressed me upon the waste of the kitchen, and I found the trencher in my accounts, and I struck it out. For six nights the threshold was bare. On the seventh, old Mrs. Dray, who had refused her broth that noon, was found at the head of the dining hall in her nightgown, seated at a table laid for no one, her mouth working, her shadow bent upon the board and eating. She spoke to me in a voice that was not hers and said, quite distinctly, 'You have kept me from my dues.' By the morning she weighed less than a child.
Three more have been taken since, each one whose plate I had sent back to the kitchen as an economy. I have set the trencher again, with white bread and gruel, and each morning it is bare, but she is not content with it now. She has learned that I can be made to refuse. Tonight I have not eaten, for I have not dared to, and I hear the dining hall filling behind my door with the sound of something eating very slowly. The trencher is on my own sill. Learn the rite, I beg you, for the nurse sleeps across the passage, and I have heard my own voice begin to answer her.
IV.Recorded Manifestations
- ✦A smell of warm bread and scalded gruel in rooms where no cooking has been done.
- ✦A wooden trencher or plate set out at dusk is found bare, wiped, and warm to the touch by morning.
- ✦Larders and pantries found stripped, with no crumb on the floor and no door forced.
- ✦A sleeper rises at night and sits at a table, jaw working upon nothing, speaking in a hoarse woman's whisper.
- ✦The shadow of the afflicted is seen eating when the body sits perfectly still.
- ✦Those taken lose weight by the hour, though food is set before them and is not touched.
Testimony of Witnesses
“I came upon a pauper at the long table in the black of the night, his mouth going like a mill, and the woman's voice in him said, 'Set it down, set it down.' I set my own supper before him and ran.”
“The master was away and the trencher was forgot for two nights. On the second a boy was found in the hall, thin as a rake and still chewing, and he looked at me with an old woman's eyes.”
“I examined the patient in the dining hall and found no pulse to speak of. Her shadow upon the wall continued to feed. I have since declined all invitations to dine in that house.”
V.Rite of Expulsion
Difficulty: Perilous
Requisites
- ☐A wooden trencher, never before used
- ☐A loaf of plain white bread, baked that day
- ☐A bowl of thin gruel, unsalted
- ☐A white cloth
- ☐A brass bell with a clapper of horn
The Rite
- I.Lay the white cloth upon the threshold at dusk and set the trencher upon it, with the bread and the gruel.
- II.Ring the bell once, and speak aloud the name of every person you have ever turned from your door.
- III.Stand three paces back from the threshold and keep your eyes upon the trencher without blinking until the candle is burnt out.
- IV.When the bread is taken, say, 'You are fed and owed nothing.'
- V.Ring the bell a second time, and bury the trencher beneath the threshold without turning your head.
- VI.Enter no room of the house until the bell has been heard to ring a third time of its own accord.
Caution. Those who perform the rite must on no account be hungry, nor have fasted within the day, for she will know it. The Society's officer Mr. Ainger, who had missed his dinner, was found at dawn seated at the threshold with the bell in his lap, his jaw working, and he was never afterwards seen to swallow.
VI.Hauntings of the Surrounding District
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Saint Luke's Church · Church · 1.1 miles
The Cassock-Dragger, spectre. A thin priest is heard hauling something heavy through the nave at night, and the pews are found scored in the morning.
St Matthew's Church · Church · 0.8 miles
The Linen-Mouthed Bride, white lady. A girl in a stained wedding sheet stands at the lychgate, and no man who meets her eyes finds his way home by the same street.
Castlemead · Castle · 1.3 miles
The Drum-Muffled Garrison, phantom procession. Soldiers with sacking over their faces march the vanished ramparts after midnight, and any who stop to number them are added.
St Gabriel's Church · Church · 0.6 miles
Hymn-Board Jack, poltergeist. Numbers on the hymn board change of themselves, and always to the day of a parishioner's burial.
Trinity Centre · Church · 1.0 miles
The Pulpit Drowner, revenant. A wet-haired preacher climbs the pulpit stair each Sunday dawn, leaving a pool in which faces are seen.
St Ambrose's Church · Church · 0.7 miles
The Vestry Magpie, spectral animal. A white bird taps at the window with a human tooth in its beak, and a death follows within the week.
Stapleton Road Chapel · Church · 0.9 miles
The Chapel-Lamp Drift, will-o'-the-wisp. A blue flame moves between the stones in the shape of a stooping man, drawing the curious toward the well.
Kensington Baptist Church · Church · 0.5 miles
The Immersion Voice, possession. A baptismal candidate rose from the water speaking in a stranger's tongue, and was never afterwards herself.
St Nicholas of Tolentino Church · Church · 1.0 miles
The Taper-Gnawer, unclassified entity. Candles burn to nothing in minutes before the altar, and something is heard chewing in the dark.
St Jude's Church · Church · 1.2 miles
The Bellrope Gentleman, headless apparition. A headless man in a frock coat hangs at the tower foot, and the rope sways when no hand has touched it.
St Peter and St Paul · Church · 0.6 miles
The Gravedigger's Whelp, phantom hound. A small black dog follows mourners home and is found in the morning lying upon the bed of the next to die.
Kingsley Hall · Manor House · 1.3 miles
The Lady of the Shut Nursery, white lady. A woman in grey gauze rocks an empty cradle, and every child who sleeps in that room wakes mute.
St Anne's Church · Church · 0.3 miles
The Sexton's Lantern-Man, spectre. A figure holding a dark lantern stands among the graves, and its light falls upon the stones that will soon be cut.
Arnos Manor Hotel · Manor House · 2.0 miles
The Brass-Bed Wife, revenant. A woman in a travelling cloak lies in the best bedroom each night, and the sheets are found warm and the room smells of the grave.
Central Quaker Meeting House · Church · 1.2 miles
The Silent Meeting Cat, spectral animal. A grey cat sits among the benches and no one sees it enter, and each Friend it looks at forgets one name.