![]() ![]() They were joined by Eleanor Macdonald and Lily McDonald (mother and daughter) and there may have been another person in here because we have shorthand notes of what happened. These are highly connected people of the late Victorian and Edwardian period and I think it says something about the power and the wealth of the people of Preston Manor – that they could get the best of the best to come and conduct a séance here. Stead also knew Douglas Murray – the two of them had tried to conduct a séance at the British Museum over the sarcophagus lid of a ‘cursed mummy’, which is another story. He died the most famous Englishman on the ship. Stead went on to meet a tragic end as he was travelling on the ill-fated Titanic in 1912. A big publishing magnate, Stead published the Pall Mall Gazette which later became the Evening Standard, and Freer worked with him on Borderland as an editor. When she came here she was working with a man called William Thomas Stead who ran a magazine called Borderland. She was also fantastic at putting on a show. “the two of them had tried to conduct a séance at the British Museum over the sarcophagus lid of a ‘cursed mummy’” She was very bright, looked strangely much younger than she actually was and passed herself off as quite a young girl well into older age. She came from a humble background but cleverly covered her tracks. In the Victorian era women were said to be good at channelling energies because we were deemed “empty vessels” unlike the men who were of course very powerful creatures.īut she was an extraordinary woman. Their motto was: The First Rule of Ghost Club is not to talk about Ghost Club.ĭouglas Murray, who was a kind of sideways family member, brought with him Ada Goodrich Freer who had set herself up as a spiritualistic medium. We had Thomas Douglas Murray who was famously a member of the Ghost Club, which was the foremost Victorian ghost hunting society set up in 1862. The leather wallpaper is filled with all manner of creatures. The room became the séance room on Wednesday 11th November 1896, when a group of people gathered here and tried to communicate with the spirits that were haunting the house, because the family had been experiencing all kinds of paranormal phenomena. The ghosts are in the paper – in the skin. ![]() This wallpaper undulates and you can almost imagine that there are figures behind it. There’s a famous book by Charlotte Perkins Gilman published in 1892 called The Yellow Wallpaper about a woman descending into madness, who sees figures coming alive in the wallpaper. The leather was moved down here in the 1880s and was in here at the time of the séance. I think the girls were trying to hit the monkeys and other creatures which seem to appear and disappear in the pattern. The unusual wallpaper is Flemish dating the seventeenth century and was originally in the twin’s bedroom upstairs. The family had been experiencing all kinds of paranormal phenomena It was also a smoking room for men to smoke their cigars because the leather wallpaper isn’t going to get impregnated with tobacco smoke. You can get a lovely fire going and make it comfortable, so this was the main room the family used in the 1890s when they weren’t entertaining, especially in the winter when the rest of the house was cold. Originally the room was a little sitting room – which is great because séance translates as a sitting in French. I have taken groups in here many times and after dark – you can make this room absolutely pitch black – and it’s very easy to become scared in here. ![]()
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