To the Editor of The Yorkshire Post.

Sir, – I am being inundated with cuttings from various North-country newspapers giving particulars of the alleged appearance of the spirit of a monk in Bolton Abbey Rectory, and stated to have been seen by my successor, Mr. Macnabb. I am amused at this old tale being raked up again. It is an old tradition that an occasional monk re-visits in spirit form the scenes of his former locality, wherever a monastic establishment has existed. I inherited this tradition from my predecessor, the Rev. C. Bellairs, who had himself never seen any appearance such as Mr. Macnabb states he saw. And it was a well-known fact that Mr. Bellairs’ two eccentric daughters loved to dwell on the recital of their experiences in the rectory, and gloried in embellishing what they imagined they saw or heard, and visitors loved to gloat over their ghostly tales. One of these tales was that certain risings of tiles which form the floor of the hall in the rectory were attempts of buried monks to emerge into earthly life again. These were, of course, accounted for by the unsuitable material in which the tiles were set, and where the “mounds” were relaid in suitable cement the tiles remained quiescent. This seems a trivial thing, but I have actually had a letter within recent years gravely asking for explanations.

I lived more than 20 years in the Rectory, and as Mr. Macnabb, in quoting me, says I told him that sounds and steps had been heard in my time, I support my statement herewith, but you expect to hear in the silence of the night sounds which are never audible in the light of day. Old houses creak and crack in mysterious ways. A stealthy rat in the dead of night takes his time in walking down a long passage, and can be distinctly heard, and rats in the walls occasionally disturbed my slumbers. I never thought of noises as being ghostly or startling. And during my residence I had pupils with my two step-sons, and visitors constantly coming and going, and neither boys, servants, nor visitors ever saw any appearance or were lost in terror.

I can imagine myself at one o’clock in a morning, after a weary investigation of accounts, and, perhaps, with an aching head, going into the hall of Bolton Abbey Rectory, and imagining a hanging brown coat or cloak to be the back of a spiritual appearance, but it is passing strange that in the instance quoted by Mr. Macnabb the Augustinian garments should have been laid aside for the raiment of an uninvited guest.

I can also conceive that a boy, knowing the tradition and hearing Mr. Macnabb’s story, would be extremely likely to imagine he saw, because he wished for the excitement of recording it, the appearance of a ghost. 

The subject of the haunted rectory was never mentioned to me by any member of the Cavendish family, and I can say that for twenty years I spent the happiest time in my life, undisturbed by any past members of the college of Augustinian canons of Bolton Priory.

Yours, etc.,

A. P. HOWES. The Vicarage, Rye, 1917