This story is not supernatural but does show how easily people can be fooled.

The story started with a little girl, Dorothy White, who lived at Blackfield Farm, hearing rapping noises in her bedroom, it was 4th January 1920. On 6th January her brother Norton said that the taps were Morse code so he started asking the entity questions. It turned out that it only wanted to talk to Dorothy and no one else. The story reached the local press with the Hertfordshire Mercury reporting that Dorothy said “About a month ago strange rappings were heard on my bedroom wall. We all talked about it because it was so very strange. Then one time he [the spirit] spoke to me down at the fowl house. I thought it was father doing some repairs. I listened again and I heard the words ‘don't be frightened, it's only your old chap'.”

Dorothy was a lonely girl with few friends so the family believed that a spirit had come to keep her company. Dorothy learnt Morse code from her brother and would spend hours talking with the spirit which seemed to know everything about the family. Nothing could be found out about the spirit except for the initials B. M.

The story eventually became widely known and a crowd of several hundred people would gather outside the gate hoping to witness something. The crowds became so big that the police had to be called in to restrain it.

A reporter from the Hertfordshire Mercury was joined at the farm by a local councillor and two members of the London press to interview the entity causing the rapping. Dorothy's room was thoroughly checked for hidden devices before the interview began. The entity was abusive and abrupt with its answers and even entertained the visitors with a tap dancing routine. The press could find nothing amiss so it seemed that the entity was real.

Eventually Reverend Brayfield, Rector of Hertingfordbury and a member of the Society for Psychical Research visited the farm and interviewed Dorothy. His conclusion, much to the disappointment of the crowd, was that the whole thing was a hoax and that the raps were being produced by Dorothy whose state of mind was such that she did not realise she was doing it. The Rector would not expand on his statement so many people still believed that there was a spirit involved. It was not until the 1980s that the truth was finally revealed. It seems that the whole thing was contrived by Dorothy and her brother with wires hidden under the floor and running out to the front garden. So effective was their hoax that they even managed to foil Arthur Conan Doyle.

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Broxbon Wood

‘The Witch of Broxbon Wood' or ‘The Devil of Broxbon' was an article written after the visit of a man to his uncle in Broxbourne on 1762. When the author visited the village he was surprised to find the village gripped by terror because of the goings-on in Broxbon Wood. It seems that a spirit had appeared in the wood in the form of a woman dressed in white robes and at times glittering all over as if she was covered in stars. She appeared to glide slowly over the ground between the closely spaced trees but if you approached (something that few would do) she would move off faster and slowly vanish. The locals gave her the name of ‘The White Devil of Broxbon Wood'.

Some locals believed that it wasn't actually a ghost but instead was a local girl who had run away so as to avoid an unwanted marriage.

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To view images see: Broxbourne Wood Album

To view a report about Broxbon Wood see: 13-08-2010 & 26-08-2011

Brickendon, Broxbourne Wood _____________________________________________________________________
Fanshaws

In 1909 the mock-Jacobean mansion known as Fanshaws was rented to Charles Theodore Barclay, a stock broker, who lived there until he died in the library in 1921. Now his ghost is said to have been seen close to the hall and is usually accompanied by the smell of cigar smoke.

Fanshaws was originally built for Henry Wilson Demain Saunders of Brickendon Grange. He acquired the land in 1883 and started building almost straight away and completed two years later. It is said that he had the house built because Brickendon Grange was too small. Not small in the sense of the overall property size but small because of the stairs. It seems that Mr Saunders was a man of ample girth who was concerned that if he died in bed they would never manage to get his coffin down the narrow, spiral staircase at the Grange. The stairs at Fanshaws were considerably wider. He actually died of a heart attack three years later in Bayford church.

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The Farmer's Boy

All of the events at the Farmer's Boy centred on a Hertford girl who had gone there to work. The girl considered herself to be psychic and the pubs spirits soon let her know that they were around. Every morning when the staff came down to open up the pub they would find that the beer had been turned off and that the cellar had been rearranged into what they classed as an old fashioned arrangement. One spirit, thought to be that of a mischievous child would sit on the dessert freezer and refuse to get off until asked so that the lid could not be lifted. Things would be moved around in the kitchen and the spirits appeared not to like having things on the walls.

In one bedroom knocking was heard on the wall and something tried to open the door but failed. Instead the figure just walked through the wall. On one occasion the girl awoke during the night to hear her dog whining at the door at the bottom of the stairs. She went down to let it out but the door would not open and no amount of banging would attract anyone's attention. Returning to bed she found the room bitterly cold so she and the dog hid under the bedclothes. Half an hour later a friend came upstairs, the door was not locked.

On another night the girl was sitting in her car outside the pub when the saw the bar lights come on and a figure walk up to the optics and help himself to a drink. She knew everyone was in bed and when the figure came over to the window she could see that it wasn't one of the regular bar staff. She described him as a man in his forties with scruffy ear length hair who stared at her with intense eyes. The man started talking to her in her head and continued to do so until she was well away from the pub.

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