Product Description

Ghosts! Ghosts! Ghosts! More supernatural tales and eerie encounters from the Haunted Isle. These intriguing stories include Phantom Soldiers at Needles Battery, Ghost girl in the well at Carisbrooke Castle, Appuldurcombe's haunted carriage, the sexy spirit at Ryde's Prince Consort, the Dead take a bow at Shanklin Theatre, and What lurks at Gallows Hill?
Meet the Guilty Guildhall Ghost, the ghost-cat of Essex Cottage, learn of Lady Tennyson's gentle spirit, Ghost-trains in the night, and the Dead of Whitecroft. Finally, no book on Isle of Wight ghosts would be complete without more tales of the lost manor of Knighton Gorges, that most haunted of places.
Why are cars drained of power there? See evidence of strange poltergeist lights captured on film. Are the accounts true? Sceptics may scoff, but scores of witnesses are convinced they are genuine. Why not judge for yourself?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #562229 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

From the Author
What are ghosts? Why are we endlessly fascinated with tales of hauntings and the supernatural? And why does the Isle of Wight appear to have so many?
People often ask me, "How on earth can you find enough stories to fill a fourth book? Surely you must have run out of ghosts by now!"
Certainly not ! After working for more than two years researching Isle of Wight Ghosts, Book Four, I have ended up with many other stories which will not see the light of day in this book, simply because there is no room for them. Now this book is completed I have at least another 100 reports of hauntings to investigate and research.
Almost everyone who has had a supernatural experience - or knows someone who has - is prepared to accept the possibility of ghosts. Why are ghost stories so fascinating? Is it because they appeal to our longing to believe in life after death?
I hope you enjoy this latest offering of Isle of Wight ghosts. I make no attempt to interpret or explain away these hauntings and I do not try to make believers out of anyone. All I ask is that you approach the subject with an open mind.
And if you ever meet a ghost, don't be afraid. Try to remember as much detail as possible about the encounter .... then tell me!

About the Author
Writer and journalist Gay Baldwin began researching and recording ghost stories in 1976, when the first book, Ghosts of the Isle of Wight, written with Ray Anker was published. There is certainly no shortage of hauntings on the Island, and More Ghosts of the Isle of Wight, Ghosts of the Isle of Wight III, Isle of Wight Ghosts Book 4, and Ghost Island have also been local best sellers.
She devised the popular Island Ghost Walks, a series of historical walks with a supernatural slant, which have introduced thousands of Islanders and visitors to the darker side of towns such as Newport and Cowes.
Although not psychic herself, as a journalist who is also a member of the Ghost Club Society and several other paranormal research organisations, Gay has interviewed thousands of people who have incredible and inexplicable experiences of hauntings. Armed with the facts, she then researches the history of the places or houses involved, looking for reasons for the ghostly happenings.
Some of the things that go bump in the night are easily explained away. An over-active imagination can conjure up all sorts of ghostly sounds, smells and apparitions. Creaking timbers; skeletal branches tap tapping on window panes; owls or bats in flight after dark; mice or rats scurrying through attics or behind walls, can be the innocent origin of many a ghost story. Not in every case however....
After more than twenty-five years of writing about ghosts, Gay firmly believes in the supernatural herself. Too many people, reasonable, rational, sensible people, have had experiences and encounters, which cannot be explained away by anything other than supernatural means.
Gay, who has lived on the Isle of Wight for most of her life, currently resides in Cowes. She has appeared on radio and television and has been featured in a programme with Michael Palin.

Excerpted from Isle of Wight Ghosts by Gay Baldwin. Copyright © 1996. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE GHOSTS AT CARISBROOKE CASTLE

A FACE IN THE WELL
For more than nine centuries the castle at Carisbrooke has stood firm against attack, a symbol of strength, a refuge for the townspeople of Newport when invaders threatened. Only once, in 1136, did the castle surrender.....when the Keep well unfortunately ran dry. Another was sunk without delay - this time in the courtyard, where the 161ft deep shaft through solid rock took three years to construct. Just over 5ft wide, it usually contains 40ft of water. Originally, prisoners were used to work a huge wooden treadwheel drawing buckets up from the depths. By 1690 donkeys had taken over the work - now three centuries on, Jenny, Jacob, Joseph and Jubilee are among the castle's biggest attractions.
So when Debi and Graham Wendes, from Chelmsford, Essex, visited the Island in August 1992, they naturally went to Carisbrooke Castle. For Debi however, that bank holiday Monday turned into an experience she can't forget. "We went into the well-house, but as I perched on the stonework of the well I started to feel really awful. I had an overwhelming impression I should not be in there, then glancing into the well I saw a girl's face looking up at me. In her late teens or early twenties, she was very slender-faced with dark curly hair pulled over to one side. Her face was very pale. She wore no jewellery and her clothing was dark, but not black. She was several feet down, below the iron grill, slightly to one side of the mouth of the well. Her dress billowed around her as though waterlogged and she seemed to be tangled up in it. I was suddenly overwhelmed with such a terrible feeling of grief that I had to get out of there."
Debi rushed outside, leaving her husband and son in the well house. But sitting in the courtyard in the sunshine, she continued to receive troubling images and emotions from the girl in the well. "I still felt clammy, claustrophobic and had trouble breathing. Whoever the girl was, I had a strong impression that her death was an accident; that she had gone into the well house in a very distressed state, slipped and fallen down the well. She was trying to tell me that she had not deliberately taken her own life."
Debi asked the museum curators if anybody had ever fallen down that well. No records could be found of such an accident, they said. A body did go down the well in the J Meade Falkner adventure novel 'Moonfleet' set in Carisbrooke Castle - but that was pure fiction. I have discovered however that in 1632 Elizabeth Ruffin, the young daughter of the Mayor of Newport, "threw herself down a well at the castle." Oglander, the Island's 17th century diarist who recorded this in his papers, assumed this was the well in the Keep. It would appear that he assumed wrongly.....

Customer Reviews

A spooky but informative book!
I have lived on the Isle of Wight all my life and picked up my interest of ghosts from my mother. So i was delighted when this book came out. It is packed full of true ghost stories and the best ghost spotting sites on the Island. A must have for anyone interested in spirit life.

Isle of Wight Ghosts Bk 4
The 4th book by author Gay Baldwin on the ghosts of the Isle of Wight, this book is packed with information about true life encounters with ghosts on the Isle of Wight. Gay Baldwin writes these accounts in such a way that you feel that you are there witnessing the ghostly encounters yourself, Gay Baldwin leaves the decision to believe the ghostly encounters with the reader which makes for fantastic reading and shows the fantastic research carried out by the author.