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The Link – Matthew Manning

We talked in Matron’s room with some of the boys who went off to bed at about eleven-thirty. After they had gone and we were on our own, chippings of wood and small pebbles and pieces of glass appeared in the room. They materialised on our laps and fell into cups of coffee; all the while there seemed to be an unusual amount of noise, knockings and raps from the walls, floor and ceiling, as well as the characteristic pinging sounds which came from the windows, pictures, and even cups.

At about midnight when most pupils were asleep, the Matron went around all the dormitories to check that everything was in order and that there was no disturbance: everything was quiet.

Just over an hour later, when everything was still and quiet except for the wall rappings in Matron's room, an icy chill swirled around our feet and the lower part of our legs. It was a sensation I have felt many times since then. It is like having ether poured over one's leg. It crept gradually up until it was so bad that we were both forced to move.-When we did so we lost this sensation: it was as if it was only surrounding the immediate area we had occupied. We both suspected that this "freezing" effect heralded something that was about to happen and we left the room and entered a small junior dormitory next to Matron's sitting room. This was occupied by eight young boys with two older prefects in charge.

The same ether-like cold appeared to creep into this room, and on the wall opposite the door was a small patch of light. There was no light in the passage that the dormitory door opened into. Putting my hand up in front of this patch of light, no shadow could be seen, as if the light was being emitted from the wall, rather than projected or reflected onto it. When I felt this patch on the wall, it was very warm, unlike the surrounding area which was as cool as an uncovered plaster wall usually is.

We stood back from it, waiting for it to grow as it had when it was seen previously; it did.

"We stood, Matthew and I, staring at this apparition on the wall opposite to the door, above the head of a sleeping boy. It was a small round bright light which gradually grew large. Suddenly Chris woke; the cold had penetrated through his sleep, and. he too saw this bright lighted circle on the wall," the Matron wrote down afterwards, and she continued: "I quietly said, 'It's all right, Matthew, I can see a cross placed centrally across it'. Matthew said, 'It's a crown of thorns round the edge'. We had no lights on - the light of this apparition was bright enough to illuminate the dormitory."

This is how Matron described what she saw, and is particularly interesting because what she saw and what I saw was not the same.