P.C. Dunmore's Notebook: The Wrong Weather at Hagnaby

Hagnaby Abbey, abbey, Maltby Le Marsh, Lincolnshire

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No photographic plates survive. The Society's photographer declined to return.

I.Background & History

Hagnaby Abbey was an abbey and former priory in Hagnaby, Lincolnshire, in the neighbourhood of Maltby le Marsh. It was one of nine Premonstratensian houses within the historical county, and the Society's file records that it is now a former monastery.

The Society has been supplied with no further particulars of the house, its foundation, or its dissolution, and declines to supply them from conjecture. The ground lies in the low country between the Wolds and the marsh, and the nearest dwellings are scattered farms.

Source: Hagnaby Abbey, Wikipedia

II.The Entity

The Rimed Canon

A file of white-habited Premonstratensian canons, seven or eight in number, who cross a single oblong of ground in the old cloister garth, each with a small rime of frost upon the shoulders though the night be warm. Their faces are hooded, and those who have seen beneath the hoods say that the faces are of every age at once, the youngest as withered as the oldest, and that the foremost canon is always a little nearer than he was a moment before.

Assessment of Peril

☠☠☠☠☠

Class IV: Malignant

Persons lingering within the oblong are aged by years in the space of an hour, and two of the Society's informants did not survive the winter after. The procession appears to mark those who observe it and to increase its pace towards them.

III.The Account

A summer dusk in a Lincolnshire field. A uniformed constable with a bull's-eye lantern stands beside a frightened labourer who hangs back, cap in hand. Before them lies a sharp-edged oblong of snow-white ground, glittering. Full-leaved hedgerow and a warm, heavy sky surround it, so the patch seems cut from another season. — Fig. I. THE SNOW THAT LAY IN AUGUST: A Constable Stands Before the Abbey's Impossible Winter!

The notebook of Police Constable Josiah Dunmore, of the Lincolnshire Constabulary, stationed at Maltby, begins on 3 August 1884 with an entry of no great consequence: 'Called to the abbey field by farm labourer Thos. Wragg, who states that snow is lying there. Found it so. A patch of ground some eighteen feet by nine, white to the depth of three inches, the hedge beyond in full leaf and the evening warm as a bakehouse. Snow does not melt on it. Wragg would not step nearer and I did not press him.'

On 11 January 1885 the constable writes: 'Hard frost throughout the parish. The same oblong is in blossom, white and pink, as though an orchard stood where no tree grows. The petals fall upward. I stood within it a quarter hour to take measurements and found my hands cold as the frost yet the blossom smelling of June. Returned home. My wife remarked that I looked tired.' By March he records that his moustache has gone grey at the roots, and that the sergeant asked after his father's health.

A farm boy's brother carries a limp, slight figure out of a frosted oblong of grass at twilight. The boy's face is lined and old beneath a child's cropped hair. Behind them, at the broken east wall of the ruined cloister, a file of hooded canons in pale habits cross the ground. Rime glitters on their shoulders and their faces are in shadow. — Fig. II. THE BOY WHO WENT IN A CHILD AND CAME OUT A GREYBEARD, While the White Canons Walked Unseen!

The turning point is the entry of 20 October 1885. A farm boy, Albert Cope, had gone into the oblong on a dare and was brought out by his brother within the hour. 'The boy went in aged twelve. I would put him at forty. He knew his brother but not his own name, and asked repeatedly what year the King was. He died on the fourth day, in his bed, with his eyes open and frost upon the inside of the window. Dr. Hallam attended and declines to give a cause.' Beneath, in a different ink: 'The canons were there when the boy was carried out. I saw them. Eight in white, crossing the oblong from the east wall. I counted eight and then there were nine.'

IV.Recorded Manifestations

Testimony of Witnesses

V.Rite of Expulsion

Difficulty: Perilous

Requisites

The Rite

Caution.

VI.Hauntings of the Surrounding District

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Markby Priory · Abbey · 1.2 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
St Clement's Church · Church · 2.2 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
St Mary's Church · Church · 2.6 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
St Peter's Church · Church · 2.6 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
Greenfield Priory · Abbey · 3.7 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
St Wilfrid's Church · Church · 3.4 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
Alford Windmill · Old Mill · 3.1 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
All Saints Church · Church · 4.9 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
Well Hall · Manor House · 5.0 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
Castle Carlton · Castle · 5.7 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
Carlton Castle · Castle · 5.9 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
St Helena's Church · Church · 5.4 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.
Miles Cross Hill · Downland Hill · 5.0 miles
Unknown, unclassified entity. Particulars withheld pending investigation.