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T C Lethbridge – A Step in the Dark

When we came to this house, Hole, in Branscombe, eight years or so ago now that we are in what is called 1966, we were asked if we minded ghosts. On hearing that we did not, we heard that forty or so years before, that is about the time of the Kaiser's War, a ghost was frequently seen here. The ghost was that of a little old woman in a red coat with white hair. It was seen so often that the 'red lady' is known to the old timers all over Branscombe. She was a very celebrated ghost.

Well, we think we know perfectly well who the red lady was. She was a Mrs. X, I still do not like to tell her name because some of her relations might be upset by it, who lived down below us here at Hole Mill. She was not a native of the place, nor even a Devonian.

After we had been here a year or so we got to know Mrs. X, and she took to dropping in for tea, especially in the winter. She never bothered to announce herself, and one frequently came into this hall in the dusk to find a tiny figure with white hair, kicking off her sea-boots in a corner, and putting on some slippers. She almost invariably wore a red coat and her hair was white.

This I feel certain was the origin of the 'red lady' ghost. The surprise and a vague feeling of unease at finding her in the dim hall, caused a memory of this event to become implanted in the fields of the stones of which the hall is built. It is most improbable that there were two red ladies. Our particular specimen had been a student of magic arts for seven years. She believed that she could leave her human body and fly around visiting the homes of her friends. This side of the matter is of no importance here, although I think we have evidence to show that she could do it.

The interest lies in the displacement of time. Real Mrs. X never appeared in this house before about 1958 and then almost invariably in a red coat. The ghost of the red lady was frequently seen in the house around the years 1911-18 or perhaps even before this time. So there was a forty years gap between the time the ghost was seen and that when the living Mrs. X took to appearing. Of course you may think that two red ladies were involved, although this seems to me to be most improbable.

I think that either I, or my wife, produced the ghost of Mrs. X.

It was surprising to see this little white-haired figure with its red cloak in the gloaming. It was a minor shock. I think we produced the ghost and it then became outside our three-dimensional time. People on the right vibration saw our shock-memory picture forty years before the actual event. This is by no means the only reported instance of this kind of thing. We all have heard of the well-known lady, and her name has been published, who came to a house on the west of Scotland of which she had often dreamed but never seen, and was greeted with: 'Why, you are our ghost!'