Name: Mr Barker Tells a Ghost Story — The Victorian Way
Uploaded: 2025-07-26T18:03:43.000Z
Duration: 17 min 14 s
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Music Thunder Thank you for the conies Mr Barker, the servants do like to eat rabbit.

Future continuous

Well if they're anything like my sons they'll be glad of them now but by March they'll be complaining they've never had anything but.

Modal verbs - B1

That may be very well but I think Marianne and I can come up with plenty of recipes so they don't get bored before then.

Now what I really wanted to talk to you about was Halloween.

Andrew is that his name the stewards room boy?

Yeah well he's asked me to tell some ghost stories in the servants hall and I wondered if you might be able to give me a hand.

Well November the 1st is All Saints Day and I was always taught to honour the dead as well as the saints.

Well I've been reading up about the origins of Halloween, how when we were all pagans spirits used to wander abroad and people lit fires to ward them off.

We used to have an Irish pot washer and he used to say his family held to old traditions, old as he didn't know when and they used to have a big family meal and they put out a portion of food for the spirits and they always lit a fire.

I wonder if they do something similar in Scotland.

She had a bonfire at Balmoral and they burnt an effigy of a witch.

Well there's those lanterns as well they make out of hollowed out turnips, punkies.

In Norfolk where I used to work they call them jack-o'-lanterns but that was also a name given to marsh gas.

I think there was some story, a nonsense really, about a fellow called Jack.

No doubt a tall tale made up by somebody in a pub to entertain a learned scholar collecting folktales.

Well in America they use pumpkins don't they?

Oh that reminds me, Mr Vert said it's been a good year for pumpkins and vegetable marrow.

I do find it difficult to find recipes for them, they're so watery.

Didn't you make a pie out of them with apples?

Oh that was with pumpkins, yes, my pum-poyne pie.

Now Marianne was telling me where she comes from in North Yorkshire, their children would go out looking for soul cakes.

They'd travel the village looking for cakes, soul cakes.

Although she did say that last time she went to visit her parents at this time of year they don't do it as much as they used to on account of the children having to stay at school for longer.

Well I would welcome a cake or two if they were made under your watchful eye.

Oh I thought you could play a cook called Margaret.

Right, now all this happened when we were preparing for one of his lordship's shoots on another estate.

Up north it was, pleasant, heathery countryside and decent shooting.

Now I was staying in a spare room in the servants' quarters and their cook, Margaret, took me under her wing and made sure I was well fed.

Now we arrived while yet the daylight lingered and whilst their lordships were at dinner I went for a ramble about the estate.

Now the house and the gardens faced the south and they looked over a few acres of pasture land down to a little winding stream that was beside a little thatched cottage that had its own vegetable patch and it was clearly on the grounds of the estate, so perhaps a gardener's cottage.

But as I got closer I could see that no smoke curled from the chimney and it had an air of waiting about it as if it had been deserted for years.

The gardens too were untended and unweeded and there was a row of chrysanthemums all shriveled up on their stems.

Now the winter sunshine faded fast in the twilight and the whitewashed walls gleamed in the gloaming and I thought I caught out the tail of my eye a light on inside one of the windows.

As I turned back I realised it had been a trick of the light, perhaps a pane of glass reflecting the sunset because it looked desolate and deserted.

Now as I looked at it I couldn't help shape the feeling, something uncanny, that there was actually someone there.

So I went through the garden and I knocked at the door but no one answered, of course no one answered.

I chided myself that I had been like a man who looks under his bed for a burglar and would have been beyond measures surprised if he had actually found one.

Well I returned to the house and I had my dinner with Margaret, made by her fair hand, and afterwards she got out her favourite pastime that she had picked up off the mistress of the house.

It's called a planchette and it speaks to the dead.

It says things that never entered my head.

You let the pencil write what it chooses.

Very often it only makes swirls and curls and every now and then a word appears.

Yesterday evening for example it wrote gardener over and over again.

The gardener here is a Methodist with a chin beard.

That little cottage down by the footbridge, is that the gardener's house?

Oh it used to be but the chin beard fellow doesn't live there.

Well I saw it and I thought that it was empty and then I had a strange feeling that there was somebody there so I knocked and I walked around the house.

There's your answer of why your planchette is saying gardener again and again.

You're thinking of the gardener's cottage.

Well I went upstairs to bed and as I went to my room a strong gleam of moonlight coming through my drawn curtains made me look outside.

My room faced the garden and that cottage beyond and as I looked at it I caught sight of a light in there behind one of the windows and I thought it was strange that that same trick of the light should be presented to me twice in the one day.

But as I looked something even stranger caught my eye.

There was a man stood there in front of the front door.

Now in the dusk I couldn't discern his features I just got the vague impression of a tallish fellow heavily built and as I looked he turned opened the door and he vanished inside.

So had my conviction been right that there was someone there but I've been distinctly told that the place was empty.

So was my conviction right that there was someone there.

I've been distinctly told that the place was empty and if so who was he who entered as if returning home.

Well the next evening after the first day of the shoot Margaret and I had dinner together again and afterwards she got out her planchette and it started off making loops and curves and peaks but then her head nodded forwards as if she'd fallen asleep and suddenly the writing took off on a definite turn and her hand jerked to a stop at the end when she woke up.

Hello, have you been playing tricks on me?

Gardener, gardener, I am the gardener, I want to come in, I can't find her here.

Oh lord, that gardener again, I must have been thinking of the empty cottage.

Empty, right, I didn't want to say to Margaret just then what I had seen or at least what I thought I had seen and anyway she went up to bed, I took the opportunity to interrogate the weather, it was a cool clear night but as I stepped outside for a walk I saw a tallish heavy set chap disappear around the corner of the house, well I didn't want there to be prowlers about so I sent my dog after him, terrifying as she is, and I waited there to see if anyone might come around that corner of the house but as I waited I heard footsteps coming from the other corner of the house as if they'd gone all the way around the estate, well those footsteps came closer and closer but no one made them, whatever it was this invisible presence came closer to me and then brushed past me and horror upon horror it felt icy cold, I reached out to try and grab hold of whatever it was but it slipped by and went inside the house, just at that moment my dog came bounding around the corner as if pursuing somebody, well she had been and whatever it was had gone inside the house, I could hear footsteps from within, so my dog and I we searched the entire ground floor of the house, we went from pantry to scullery to boot room to servants hall and all was empty and quiet, then we went into the kitchen, that was empty and quiet too but there was a rocking chair sat by the fire and it was tipping gently back and forth as if someone lately sat upon it had suddenly stood up, well my dog barked something terrible at that rocking chair and I wanted to reach out and stop it but I could not persuade myself to go anywhere near it, now what I had seen or what I hadn't seen gave me a rather terrible night's sleep and what the planchette had said kept repeating in my mind, I want to come in, I can't find her here, well someone had come in and they made a thorough job of searching, now who was this mysterious invisible gardener and who were they searching for, well the next morning Margaret had to go off down to town to make sure some particular ingredients were ordered correctly by her kitchen maid, when she came back she had a flush of excitement all over her face, never laugh at my planchette again, I've heard the most extraordinary story from Maud Ashfield in the village, horrible but so frightfully interesting, there was a gardener here some years ago and he used to live in that little cottage and when the family were away up in London he and his wife used to caretake here, he married a wife much younger than himself and gradually he became very jealous of her and one day in a fit of passion he strangled her with his own hands, a little while after someone came to the cottage and found him sobbing over her trying to restore her, they went to the police but before they came back he had taken his own life, he had cut his throat, isn't it all horrible but surely it's rather curious that the planchette said gardener, I am the gardener, I want to come in, I can't find her here, you see I knew nothing about it, I shall do the planchette again this evening, no no not not tonight Margaret, why not you don't have to attend if you don't want to, anyway I just ask you not to, you have got something on your mind, out with it, I believe you're nervous, you think that there is something clear about, what is it?

Nothing, nothing, go ahead if you must, all right just for ten minutes and I promise you I won't think of gardeners, well no sooner had Margaret's hand touched the board of the planchette when it started writing across the page, her head tipped forwards as if asleep once again and the writing scrawled out there across the plain white paper, I have come in and I still can't find her here, are you hiding her from me, I will search the room where you are and at that moment an icy blast of wind blew through the place and there was a thunderous smash at the door as if someone knocking, I turned to Margaret, Margaret wake up, I think someone is at the door, the door swung open and a figure ill-defined in the shadows stepped forwards, tallish, heavy set and as he came into the room his head lulled upon one of his shoulders and his eyes swept the room as if searching, they were infinitely sad his eyes and Margaret whose eyes were open now as well was staring at this dreadful visitor and as we sat there his mouth opened above that terrible rust coloured beard but no sound came out, just slathered as he stared at us and he lifted his head and I could see that one side of his throat was carved open and glistening red, I don't know how long we sat there and stared at him as he stood there and stared in silence at us, could have been mere seconds, could have been hours but at length the spectre turned around and walked back the way he had come, I heard the bolts drawn back from the door and it slammed shut strong enough to shake the house, it's all over, God have mercy on him, on him whatever he was, ghost or dream, memory or phantasm, well whatever he was I think something truly terrible had happened in that house and what Margaret said was true enough, God have mercy upon him well Mr Barker I think you're going to give us all nightmares, I'm sure no one will dare go down to the kitchen garden again Avis you were a marvel, you were born to it, I don't know I think a career on the stage might be quite precarious well you tell that to Mrs Scott Siddons or Sarah Bernhardt, I've heard Lily Langtree might be treading the board soon now I must be off, I've got to prepare for the weekend shoot, these lordship stands won't mend themselves and I need to think about pumpkins, well thank you very much Mr Barker, I will see if I can find you a cake or two and we will do this at Halloween, but you must make sure you don't frighten Mr Scott too much

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Mr Barker Tells a Ghost Story — The Victorian Way

trick

stare

draw

curiosity