Perhaps the island's oldest town, Brading boasts three very dark events, but from which of these comes the Old Rectory Mansion's notorious ghost?
Brading. Oldest Town on the Isle of Wight?
Notable local diarist Sir John Oglander, claimed Brading as the most ancient town on the Isle of Wight, "for receipt of strangers" and who knows from how far back in time?
The Roman villa unearthed nearby is nearly 2000 years old, but flint-working remains uncovered further along the coast, suggest hunter-gatherer peoples arrived here during prehistoric times.
Three Dark Mysteries
Brading has three dark stories. One surfaced along with a skeleton found underneath the floorboards in the Old Rectory Mansion.
The skeleton remains were for many years displayed in a glass coffin case, as part of a Wax Works exhibition which included a notoriously nasty Chamber of Horrors, which featured an impressive range of unpleasantly uncomfortable devices used by the Holy Inquisition.
The second dark event is documented, literally in the history of the Church, a mass unaliving event that swept across the island, and probably started in Brading.
The third mu.der-mystery is more folklore than fact, and sprang to life when Brading Haven was drained and an old well was revealed in the mud.
Paranormalists wonder if the ghost of the Old Rectory Mansion is linked to one of these events, but which is the mystery.
Skeleton Found in the Old Rectory
The Old Rectory Mansion, Brading's landmark historic building stands at the top of the high street, neighbouring the church of St Mary the Virgin. The Old Rectory is among the Isle of Wight’s most famously haunted buildings.
Local legend claims its supernatural sitting tenants include the foreign ghost of a m.rdered Frenchman who cursed the house until his bones were returned to his native land.
Repatriation was attempted but no one wanted them and some residents believe this rejection made the haunting worse.
Many intrepid ghost-hunters have ventured to stay the night in this building; one room in particular in the white and black timbered wing. Then next morning tell of ghostly footsteps, rattling handles and terrifying screams.
Some report sightings of a tall figure gliding through the wall into the room. At such moments the name Louis de Rochefort is mentioned and accusations turn to m.rder.
Mystery #1 The Unlucky Guest Louis de Rochefort
According to legend the Mansion m.rder happened here one night in the 1640s during the reign of King Charles I.
Since Tudor times it housed a quay-side inn and its rooms, formerly the Old Rectory Mansion, were used for accommodation of every variety.
The victim is believed to have come from France; he ate a meal here, drank wine and then retired upstairs to the bedroom overlooking the church. Later that night as he slept, someone entered the chamber and with extreme prejudice inserted a knife.
But before he died the Frenchman croaked a curse, so the legend claims; with his final breath he spluttered, ‘...I will haunt zis house until my remains are returned to my native land.’
Since that fateful night people claim the angry restless soul of Louis de Rochefort roams the house in search of his corpse that somehow was lost.
Until by chance, 300 years later, a body was found.
During excavations in the 1960s workmen searching for the water-main found a bone, and then more, then unearthed an entire skeleton. When the landlord saw these remains he felt certain they had found Louis’ bones.
‘At last!’ cheered the people of Brading, ‘Louis can go home.’
And so he did. Collected up and casketed out, Louis’ bones were flown to France, his homecoming advertised in the French national press but no one claimed him.
So Louis came back to the Old Rectory Mansion, laid in display in a glass-topped coffin resting in French soil to keep him quiet.
But he would not rest, for many residents and visitors heard the floorboards creak with ghostly footstep and assumed Louis’ supernatural sulk had resumed.
Various investigators have tried braving the room for a night only to leave before the morning light, fearful of the angry Frenchman’s ghostly antics.
Mystery #2 King Caedwalla's Massacre
A less likely theory concerning the identity of the ghost is the supernatural activity is caused by the brave spirit of Saint Wilfrid who chose to remain as spiritual sentry, to guard against any relapse of the island's inhabitants back into their unGodly ways of idol-worship.
The Venerable Bede, a renowned scholar compiled an ecclesiastical history of the English people and published it in CE 781. Bede entered a record for the year 687 during the time when Saint Wilfrid lived in the neighbourhood and supported the work of a Saxon warlord named Caedwalla.
The entry is as follows:
'...After Caedwalla had conquered the kingdom of the Gerissi he also subdued the Isle of Wight which up to that time had been abandoned to idol-worship; and he sought to exterminate the natives by a terrible slaughter and in their place to establish his own followers.
The Anglo Saxon Chronicles identifies Saint Wilfrid with Caedwalla:
And he bound himself by a vow, although not then regenerated in Christ, that if he gained the island, a fourth part thereof, and of the spoil, he would dedicate to God. This vow he fulfilled by bestowing it, for God's service, upon Wilfrid the bishop who was present with him.'
Mystery #3 The Well & the Ruin of Sir Bevis Thelwall
Those who have seen the ghost of the Old Rectory Mansion describe a disdainful 'aristocratic' figure gliding through walls; and not a shady figure dressed in monkish robes, sporting a tonsured haircut which has led to another theory of whom the ghost might be.
Some paranormalists wonder if it is the frustrated spirit of Sir Bevis Thelwell, the man who first drained Brading Haven and achieved his own ruination; searching for the wretched leak.
During the summer of 1609, granted permission by King James I, Sir Bevis struck a deal with Sir Hugh Myddleton to employ a small army of Dutch groundsworkers to construct a sea defence and drain the Haven.
For a while that defence held, and the workers were paid. The huge muddy project cost £6,000; a lot in those days. Unfortunately a storm struck the island, the wall sprang a leak and Sir Bevis was ruined.
For all that money and trouble all Bevis and the Brading residents found was ground too salted for planting, and a stone well. "Roman," guessed the local historians. "Druid," said the mystics of Brading.
Which revealed perhaps Brading's darkest story of all.
Mystery #4 Is the Annual Druid Festival of Fire
The last, and most unlikely theory about the identity of the Old Rectory ghost is that he or she is the doomed spirit of a druid ceremony that happened long ago.
According to Victorian folklorist Abraham Elder, in his collection of Tales of the Isle of Wight, the druids long ago gathered in Brading to take part in their annual bonfire celebration.
No one knows if this actually happened here; the only evidence of such primal activities was the well, which most archaeologists at the time believed to be Roman, not Celtic druid.
No one has ever reported seeing a ghostly druid in Brading; or any place else on the island, as a matter of fact. Why not is a good mystery.
The Druids of Coranied
Brading, so Victorian mythweavers insisted was the Isle of Wight druids' sacred site, rivalled only by the Pillars of Ur, the great Needles Rocks at the far end of the chalk spine traversing the island now known as the Needles.
Abraham Elder in Tales & Legends of the Isle of Wight described the evening scene of Brading's dim and very distant past: the annual druid party at Brading well. A feast of druid delicacies, mistletoe and interesting pyrotechnics as the main event.
"The Druids of the Coranied held a day of sacred mysteries on the sixth day of the moon, in that month of the year when the nights are longest; for they venerate the night rather than the day.
Because darkness was more ancient than light, and because the lot of their race was cast toward the setting sun."
Even to this day folklorists remind us with gory glee of the druids' grim religious reputation. Of how once a year they assembled in Brading to watch a gruesome spectacle. This is the horrific image people hold about druids.
Most of us assume when druidism ended, so did the nasty annual parties.
In fact things got worse. Proof of which could be seen in the Old Rectory Mansion's popular wax-works exhibition. Now gone, but in its basement the Chamber of Horrors zone displayed a terrifying assortment of devices used by the Holy Inquisition on people, long after the druids were history.
Some paranormalists suspect the ghost of the Old Rectory Mansion is linked to the use of one those infernal devices.
What do you think?