A new book – Britain’s Ghostly Heritage (2022) by John West – contains an enjoyable introduction by historic crime authority Stewart Evans. Best known for his bestselling studies of the Jack the Ripper murders (and one of a handful of writers actually worth reading on the enduring mystery), he reveals a long-standing side interest in ghost stories, especially those from East Anglia.
In his introduction he shares a personal account of a ghost hunt he embarked upon in October 1972 while serving as a young police officer with the Suffolk Constabulary. Along with two fellow constables, he spent a night inside the reputedly haunted Westwood Lodge, an isolated manor house near Blythburgh in east Suffolk. His account recalls the style of independent, low-tech ghost hunting then at its zenith.
Westwood Lodge stands in an area which in many ways still seems pleasantly detached, even remote, despite this stretch of the Suffolk coast experiencing a boom in popularity over the last 30 years. Encompassing Southwold, Walberswick and Dunwich, it has latterly become fashionable for country rambles, with Sarah Baxter remarking in the Daily Telegraph that “this underrated county is the best place in England for a spring walk” (26 Feb 2022). In fact, she merely follows in the footsteps of many illustrious ghost hunters since the 1920s, including Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, James Wentworth Day, Peter Underwood, Andrew Green and Joan Forman, all attracted by the high concentration of hauntings in the district.
Walkers and ghost hunters alike frequently set off from the outstanding local landmark in this area, Holy Trinity Church, 4 Feb 2007). Blythburgh Church is a fine example of the mature perpendicular style of English Gothic architecture. Here on Sunday 4 August 1577 during a thunderstorm the Devil (according to an ancient pamphlet) appeared as a black dog wreaking havoc and leaving burn marks from his fiery claws still visible on the north door before going to mount a similar attack at Bungay an hour later (see ). Near here in 1944 a plane exploded, killing Joseph Kennedy Jr, eldest brother of US President John F Kennedy. Crossing the A12 bisecting the village, one reaches the haunted 18th century White Hart Inn where strange knocking sounds have been heard in the dead of night. Heading coastwards along footpaths, one passes over heathland including the stretch known as ‘Toby’s Walks’ commemorating Tobias Gill, a black soldier and drummer executed and gibbetted for the murder of a local woman, Anne Blakemore, in 1750. He reputedly returns at midnight, driving a phantom coach. Beyond lie dense woods and marshland where wildlife flourishes amid the whispering reedbeds within what is designated as the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
