The Society for the Investigation of Spectral Phenomena
The Ropery Household: Three Testimonies of the Laid Table
St Hilda's Hospital, hospital, Whitby, North Yorkshire
I.Background & History
St Hilda's Hospital is a historic building on The Ropery in Whitby, a town in North Yorkshire, England. The Society's dossier records little more than this: that it is old, that it stands in the narrow streets below the abbey headland, and that it has borne the name of the saint associated with the town.
The Ropery lies close to the harbour and the older churches of the town, in a district of steep lanes where the sea air presses against the walls. The Society has been able to verify no further particulars of the building's founding or its use, and sets down none.
Source: St Hilda's Hospital, Wikipedia
II.The Entity
The Nightingale Matron
A household of grey, close-lipped figures glimpsed passing through the rooms with trays, linen and warming-pans, led by a tall woman in the starched cap and cape of a ward sister. Each carries out its duty a fraction wrong: the pans are warmed with nothing in them, the places are laid for one more than sat down, and the clocks are wound backward. Where the figures pass, the air is as warm as a recently vacated bed.
Assessment of Peril
Class III: Hostile
The household has never been known to strike a living person, but those who sleep in the rooms it warms are found to have been tucked in by hands not their own, and none has slept easily since.
III.The Account
The first testimony is that of Mrs. Edna Pickersgill, who was a girl of nine in the winter of 1941, when her mother kept the keys of the house on The Ropery after the last of the staff had been sent to other duties. 'We were told the building was shut,' she said, 'and so it was, with the shutters up and the beds stripped. But my mother would come down at six and find the kitchen table laid, with plates and cups and spoons for fourteen, and the kettle warm, and no one's footprint in the flour she had scattered on the flags.' Mrs. Pickersgill said her mother simply cleared the table each morning and said nothing, for the war had taught the household not to ask questions of small mercies.
The second testimony is that of her son, Mr. Alan Pickersgill, joiner, taken in 1968. 'My mother told you about the table,' he said. 'She would not tell you about the beds. I slept in the front room as a lad, and every night at nine the sheets were warm when I got in, as warm as if a body had just risen. One night I put my hand into the hollow and it was the length of a grown woman, and the pillow was dented on both sides, as though two had lain there facing each other. The clocks were wound each night, too, but backward, so that the springs were slack by morning and the hands stood at an hour that had not yet come.'
IV.Recorded Manifestations
- ✦Tables found laid each dawn for a number of diners that increases by one over the years.
- ✦Beds warmed to the heat of a living body, with a hollow pressed into the sheets.
- ✦Clocks wound nightly in the wrong direction, their hands resting at hours not yet come.
- ✦A smell of carbolic and scorched linen without any source.
- ✦The sensation of a hand smoothing the coverlet over a sleeper's chest.
- ✦Pewter cups found poured and cooling at the place set at the head.
Testimony of Witnesses
“I saw a woman in a nurse's cape go in at the shut door with a warming-pan, and the door never opened. She turned and looked at me through the wall, and I have not gone down The Ropery after dusk since.”
“I took the sleepers' pulses myself and found them calm to the point of stupor. Each swore they had been tended in the night. I put it down to suggestion, and I should be glad to go on doing so.”
“At two in the morning every window showed a lamp, though the place has no light laid on. Fifteen shadows crossed the glass in a line, each carrying something, and the last stopped and bowed to me.”
V.Rite of Expulsion
Difficulty: Perilous
Requisites
- ☐A plain deal table and sixteen unlit candles
- ☐A warming-pan filled with cold ashes
- ☐A clock wound to the correct hour
- ☐A sheet of unbleached linen
- ☐A cup of water drawn before sunrise
The Rite
- I.1. At six in the evening, strip every bed in the house and carry the linen out by the front door, never the back.
- II.2. Set the deal table in the kitchen and place sixteen candles upon it, leaving the head unoccupied and unlit.
- III.3. At nine, wind every clock in the proper direction and speak aloud the true hour as each is set.
- IV.4. Pour the cup of water at the head of the table and leave it untouched.
- V.5. Sit in silence until the household enters, and do not look at the tall figure, whatever she carries.
- VI.6. At the stroke of midnight, say clearly, 'The house is closed, and no bed is made,' and extinguish the candles from the foot upward.
- VII.7. Leave by the front door and do not return until dawn.
Caution. The Society's footnote records that Mr. H. Ledgard looked up at the tall figure in step five, and has not since been known to rise from a chair unless another sits beside him. Under no circumstances accept the cup.
VI.Hauntings of the Surrounding District
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Abbey House · Abbey · 0.3 miles
The Steward of Shut Doors, spectre. A stooped figure in livery turns the key of the house from within each dusk, and those locked out hear him weep for the one he has already admitted.
Whitby Abbey Cross · Abbey · 0.4 miles
The Chiselled Penitence, revenant. Hands are said to shape the stone of the cross at night, and by morning the carving shows the face of whoever watched.
Abbey Stables · Abbey · 0.4 miles
The Hay-Breathing Mare, spectral animal. A grey mare breathes in the empty stalls, and anyone who strokes her finds the warmth of her flank but no flank beneath the hand.
Whitby Abbey · Abbey · 0.5 miles
The Abbess of Salt Hours, white lady. A pale woman walks the broken nave at the turn of the tide, and the sea answers her each time she lifts her hand.
Whitby Cemetery · Cemetery · 0.5 miles
The Gravedigger's Spark, will-o'-the-wisp. A small blue flame hovers over unopened ground, and hurries to wherever a grave will next be wanted.
St Patrick's Church · Church · a few paces
The Vestry Muster, phantom procession. A line of silent parishioners files into the church at dusk, and the number who leave is always one fewer than entered.
Seamen's Hospital · Hospital · 0.2 miles
Knocking Bosun, poltergeist. Hammered blows on the ward walls keep a seaman's watch, and bedclothes are torn away from any sleeper who dreams of land.
Whitby Quaker Meeting House · Church · 0.3 miles
The Stillness Between Pews, unclassified entity. A silence of unnatural density gathers in the meeting room, and those within find they cannot recall having spoken.
St Ninian's Church · Church · 0.4 miles
The Mariner at the Lychgate, headless apparition. A drowned master in oilskins stands at the gate with his hat held where his face should be, and bows to every mourner.
Flowergate Old Chapel · Church · 0.4 miles
The Borrowed Preacher, possession. A congregant is seized by a voice that preaches in a dead minister's cadence, and cannot be silenced until the candle gutters.
St John's Church · Church · 0.4 miles
The Bell-Rope Cur, phantom hound. A rough black dog pads the aisle and gnaws at the bell-rope, and a death follows each time it is heard to whine.
Brunswick Methodist Church · Church · 0.4 miles
The Harmonium Widow, spectre. A woman in mourning plays the silent keys at midnight, and those who hear the tune cannot leave it out of their heads.
St Hilda's Church · Church · 0.4 miles
The Cold-Handed Sexton, revenant. A grey man scrapes the steps of the church each night, and leaves a damp print on the shoulder of those he passes.
Bagdale Hall · Manor House · 0.4 miles
The Parlour Heron, spectral animal. A heron stands in the panelled hall at dusk, its eye fixed on whoever will not live out the winter.
Whitby Hospital · Hospital · 0.5 miles
The Drawn Curtain, unclassified entity. A curtain closes by itself around an empty bed, and those who open it find the sheet freshly warmed.
