The Eighth of Seven Children

By Caraf Avnayt

John Waltham was born in 1778 and was last seen in 2007.
At one time a magistrate in England, after decades of service in the Army, he faked his own death, escaping to the jungles of India.
He thought he had come there to die in peace. He was sixty three, then, in 1841. But instead he started a new life.
He met Vina, the woman of his dreams and had three daughters.
Just when they were of the age to get married, John traveled back to Britain to settle his sister's estate.
On his return, he found the entire settlement where he and his family lived, a tribal one, of Semitic origin, wiped out without a trace.
For the next ten years he was called Mad John, and even considered an enemy of the state for insisting that a whole tribe had been wiped out in India.
Following a spiritual experience that rejuvenated him, he returned to India, to search for his daughters.
To get access to secret records, John joined the Freemason Brotherhood, and rose to giddying heights for his work with vampires in Ethiopia.
John lived to find his granddaughter, great granddaughter, and his great great granddaughter, who he looked after and taught till the age of twenty-six.
This is just the barest of bare shells of his amazing life.
It is written to share with all people, that if our spirit wants to achieve something, our bodies are capable of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caraf Avnayt
• Release date: Mar 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215566503

Caraf Avnayt

Caraf Avnayt is Mom to Gavriel and a Herbalist.

Book preview

The Eighth of Seven Children

The Life of John Waltham Jr.

by

Caraf Avnayt

When two hearts unite, a storm is unleashed that rages on through eternity in different forms, changing, breaking, rebuilding, reforming, until it makes a land of Bliss, for those hearts to love in and live, in forever.

John Waltham Jr.

29th March 1778 – 7th June 2007

Taken on 14th February 2005

This is the only photo I have of my beloved Great, Great, Granddad.

He outlived three generations of his descendants to look after me and pass on invaluable heritage.

INDEX

Preface

Introduction

The Eighth of Seven Children

John in the Army

Escape

India

The Gifts of the Jungle

John’s Wildest Dreams Come True

The Girls

Marmaran becomes Prince

The Dissolution

The Grave

India – Again

Inner Struggles

The Beacon of Hope

The Tribes and His Daughter’s Name

The Tribes -2

Calcutta

Africa

Land Bridges

The Unravelling

The Violent Murder of Ford, the Sniffer Vampire

The Ides of March

Half her height, Twice her mouth

1996

The Big Fight

In Conclusion

Conversation with John – About How to Become Wealthy

Preface

I don't think I ever told you how my thrice great grandparents met, Ed; Caraf, my Granddad John Waltham's mother and his father John Waltham Sr.

It just went right out of my mind. Today I suddenly remembered it. It's something very sweet, Ed.

John Waltham Sr. was the only survivor of a flood of his village. He was found on a hay stack that somehow hadn't sunk but was floating. He got brought up by nuns in a convent. Nuns weren't very popular in Scotland, but they used to be real kind to people and it was a welcome thing for them to have a child to look after. The population of that place was very small in those days. It's a remote place called Erie.

So John Waltham Sr. grew up on the king's money. The story was that the king was supporting that convent because some love interest of his he wanted to keep secret, was living there protected.

He grew up like a noble man, and went to the best college in Edinburgh and then Berkeley and was employed by the King directly as part of team to map the kingdom. He was a cartographer, with some heavy academic titles by the time he was thirty-four.

He always liked rural areas like the one he grew up in so he would go map very distant places, where no other cartographer wanted to go. Those were the first maps that weren't then already hundreds of years old.

The old maps had islands that had disappeared then, and new ones that hadn't been mentioned before.

In the old maps, landmarks like buildings and big trees had been used a lot and many of those were gone now. So everything had to be redone.

Anyway, so John used to go to those remote places. He had a general given area within which he could decide how to proceed. He was more or less independent in his daily work. He had a roving lifestyle. He slept in inns whenever he needed to sleep indoors.

He would go to the river in the morning, catch his own fish, cook them, eat them, keep some wrapped in bread for the rest of the day, and get on the road carrying his instruments on his back. Unlike the cartographers of now, he used to follow the rivers.

In those days the roads were the least dependable thing. But rivers were dependable.

One day when John was cooking his food, he saw in front of him an old woman, very short. He thought he was seeing a member of the elf or dwarf family. In those days, they were around in those areas a lot. They would ask for help from travelers now and then.

So he asked her, Is there anything you need?

She smiled and disappeared.

John could not forget her. He felt that if she had appeared to him in that glen, she could appear again. He decided not to move on that day. It was the sabbath, so he thought perhaps it was best he rest there that day.

He lay down and fell asleep.

When he woke it was dark and the stars were above and beautiful. He decided to stay there that night. It was summer and he could sleep outdoors easy.

That night he had many spiritual experiences. He saw angels climbing a ladder to heaven, just like Jacob the patriarch saw. He was spiritually much helped and the next morning he believed that was what he had been delayed there for.

He got on his path.

A few days later, again the old lady appeared. This time she pointed him west.

The next day he left the river bank and went west instead; Straight west as the crow flies.

A few days later, the old woman appeared again and pointed in another direction. Again, John followed that direction as the crow flies.

He then reached the western sea. (It was called that then because it was the sea to the west of Scotland.)

There he got a boat taking him in the direction he was following.

The people on the boat; none of them spoke the Gaelic he knew. In those days those islands of the Hebrides had people of languages no one else knew but that island.

But he got out his paper and pencils and he drew the old lady who had appeared to him. And he showed it to them. And they were like, Oh yeah, we know her. No problem.

ELEVEN DAYS LATER, after going in and out of various islands on business, even back and forth, they finally drop him off at this remote island where the sea gulls were so loud that he thought he would go deaf immediately.

On that island, he refreshed himself and set out walking, looking for a place to lodge away from the shore.

Up ahead he found a person making carriages. He was bemused because, On this little island, who would need or buy carriages? He showed that man his drawing and the man directed him with gestures onto a path.

He went on it and would you believe it, Ed, he came to a little cottage, on the edge of a street, with many more cottages. The strange thing was that the little cottage was the only one that looked inhabited.

He went in and knocked on the door. And who opened it but the very old woman who he had been seeing!

She asked him in and he went in and told her how he'd traveled from Ulster to there, called on by her.

She said, I must be in need of you then.

She asked him to stay for the night. It turned out the village was uninhabited in those summer months, because the people all used to go to another island for the fishing season there in the summer. They'd come back in the fall.

She was alone there now, with just a few others on the island who didn't go for the fishing season.

That night something happened and the old woman fell out of her bed and hurt her hip.

John rushed to her room when he heard the noise and found her in a lot of pain, biting her lip in agony.

He lifted her back into bed and had to set her hip back into position. She was very, very, old and he feared for her life.

The next morning, he wrote a letter from her to her old friend on the mainland telling her that this had happened and saying that if any of her many daughters could come and stay with her till she became alright, she would be much obliged. That was a very close friend of hers.

John decided to remain and keep house and look after the old woman till help arrived. She couldn't move out of bed at all, so he had to nurse her.

It became apparent to him that she was going to die soon.

Every day she would tell him things about her life. She'd had a very beautiful and magical life in the times when heaven and earth were together and ugliness hadn't been seen yet in those islands.

She taught him to make many things like jams and different things from fruits that grew nowhere else.

After twenty weeks, they heard that a boat had been seen heading to the island and that it might bring a reply to her letter or maybe someone to look after the old woman.

When John came home from fishing, he heard a woman's voice and ran in.

There was Caraf, the daughter of the old woman's old friend. She had come there from Wales! In those days no young woman would travel alone such a distance but she had. She was very short but it was like she filled the house.

John felt very irritated because it seemed she was taking over all that he had done. She was so bossy, saying, We'll move the dresser there and move that there. And so on.

He controlled himself and politely asked her if he could speak to her in the garden.

When she came out to the garden, he was all ready to threaten her, saying that he wouldn't tolerate it if she had designs on the old woman. He had planned all kinds of rude things to say.

But when she came out, she started asking him things about the old woman's health that surprised him, because it showed she really cared. He was pleasantly surprised and told her everything that had happened.

She and him became friends and that very night they went for a walk together after dinner.

When they returned, the old woman was actually on her feet in the parlor saying she was feeling well and wanting to hear some music. So, they played her some music and it was a very beautiful time.

Caraf and John got married nine weeks later, when the only person who officiated weddings there, came back with the others from the fishing season. The scandal was that Caraf was already pregnant on her wedding day, but they all understood. What can you do when the only person who does weddings is off for the fishing season?

For the rest of her life though they considered her scandalous. She had red hair till the back of her knees. Her voice was such that it carried above every voice in the church and lots of people thought she was the devil from Wales that they'd been warned about all along.

She and John lived there in that very village after the old woman passed; in that very cottage, and there their children were born. Their child, my Granddad's three older brothers all lived in the area till the time when Granddad was away and they said a flood wiped out the whole settlement.

Now no one lives on that part of the island. In the 1960s when Granddad went there he found a new settlement on the other end of the island, with people who had no particular connection to the place. They didn't even know that there had once been a settlement on the other side,

How things change, Ed. But I remember what Granddad told me.

Those were real times, Ed. My ancestor did go, following a vision across the land and sea and so did my grandmother, for the sake of an old woman living alone, who needed care. They loved each other so, and that's why I, and my son Gabriel are here today. We're made of those times and those strong feelings.

Feelings strong enough to make people leave their lives and all familiar and safe to them, to go towards something calling their heart.

I did the same in my life too, didn't I?

Introduction

Dear Ed,

You know how I keep talking about my great, great, granddad John Waltham? I thought people would want to shut me up, Ed. I’m that kid who is always saying, My Granddad said this, my Granddad did that. But people actually love to hear about him.

Just the other day I posted his picture and a few lines about him on my Instagram account and suddenly I had two hundred more followers!

Somehow, Ed, the dude is still so rocking that everyone wants to know about him. And you know, Ed, in a way, he is everyone’s Grandfather. I don’t know how, but when I talk about him, but people recognize him.

Actually Ed, I don’t have even one normal Granddad, who didn’t do exploits worth writing a book about, in many generations. Each was a pathbreaker, who went way off what was expected of them. But this particular Granddad lived so long, all the way to 2007, that he shattered all the Granddad awesomeness records and topped the Granddad Hall of Fame ratings.

In 2006, Ed, I wanted to write Granddad’s stories of his life down and told him so. He said, You do not have the maturity to do so. Now in 2023, I daresay Ed, I doubt I have the maturity to do it even now. His was such a life, Ed.

But he’s my Granddad and I have a right to write my immature version of his life, because as I see it, if I don’t, now, who knows, maybe the stories will die with me. I don’t want that. I’ve already forgotten lots of names and years and such.

And Ed, if the old man wanted his life story be written a certain way, he shouldn’t have left me in this world yet, he should’ve stayed on longer. I know I sound a little harsh here, Ed. Honestly, a part of me can’t forgive him for leaving me here in this world without him. He was my only blood family after my Dad left in 2005.

But very well, I understand with my mind. He must have wanted to go on to his wife and his people. But you must understand my resentment. That man walking this earth just meant so much to me, Ed.

The Eighth of Seven Children

John Waltham Sr. and his wife, Caraf, living on that remote island of the Hebrides, where wild ponies roamed, had seven children. Every time she went into labor she would sing through the birth, so loudly the entire street could hear. The men in the pub would say, This one will kill us all.

Then when their eldest was a father himself, John Waltham Sr. disappeared. He’d had a dispute over tax, and people assumed that the Government had murdered him. The Government was, in those days, straight out murdering anyone who opposed their diktats on life in the islands. They even had rules about what SORT of fishing nets could be used, and if someone couldn’t afford those, they’d go to their house and extort whatever they could from them.

But one day John Waltham Sr. did not return from his trip to the next island, where the only provisions shop was, back then.

The next morning, his boat was found adrift a huge distance away from where he should’ve been. In it were the things he’d purchased for the family. That’s how they identified the boat as it had no other markings. The only woman on that island who’d dare wear purple ribbon was his wife, Caraf, and there was a roll of it in the boat.

The family were mystified. The village thought they were going to never hear the end of Caraf’s sorrow as she was loud about everything. She couldn’t have a change of opinion or a tiff with her daughter without the whole village hearing about it. So they braced themselves for the worst.

Surprisingly, she simply went on with life. After a while everyone got on and life moved on.

It was a time of great political changes then, with boats coming and going, meetings and speeches. A school was built for the first time, an orphanage as well for children from another island that had been ravaged by a storm.

Caraf’s daughter, Mary Waltham was the first teacher in that little school. She was the only one on the island who knew English, as she’d gone and lived with family on the mainland much of her childhood.

Eight years after John Waltham Sr.’s death by disappearance, a huge shocker happened.

Caraf gave birth to a little baby boy.

He came quietly in the middle of the night. He had soft straight hair on his head that was dark in childhood but turned golden as a teenager. He didn’t cry like other babies. He was a quiet baby.

Caraf’s children, were shocked.

She had become a bit of a loner since her husband’s passing. She barely ever left the house. She was busy all the time taking care of her grandchildren – she had seven by then. How had she managed to get pregnant? Who was the father?

She said to them, There’s only one man I ever loved and he’s been with me in spirit, now as he was before.

Her children understood. But they knew this was going to be a most horrific scandal in the village. Caraf’s daughter was the school teacher. Her son was the clerk in the Govt. fishing office where local people could bring their produce and sell it for export. Her other son owned the island’s most reputed distillery. The distillery business required the highest trust as no one wanted their produce compromised or mixed with others’.

The family decided to tell no one of the eighth of Caraf’s seven children. There were other children in the house, babies being born, that it would be easy to hide him. There were orphans on the island, then called urchins hanging about all the time, so no one really expected to know everyone on the island anymore.

The child had a name, Ed, not John, but which he could no longer remember as an adult.

He grew up a loner, a child who never spoke. He spent his days in the wild heather fields on the far side of the village, his friends the wild ponies who roamed there. All my life he told me about them, Ed, filling my heart with the love and longing he felt for that Earth that birthed him and loved him and grew him up. I cannot tell you, Ed, how he loved his birthland. It is my belief it lived in him and lives in me, and will always live in our bodies and souls. Such a love it was.

——-

Caraf’s second youngest son, named John Waltham after his dad, died mysteriously at the age of seventeen. They had this big vat in which they made their homemade liquor. It was about five and a half feet deep. The boy was about six feet eight inches.

Yet, he drowned in the vat. It happened so suddenly, with all the family around. He didn’t call out, no one noticed anything amiss. He just got into the vat and drowned. He could’ve just stood up, but he drowned.

That John Waltham, was one of the first children on the island to get a christening certificate. He’d been christened at the age of twelve. His age hadn’t been mentioned on the certificate.

At one time, recruiters came around the islands, asking for able bodied men to join the British Army. Granddad was just thirteen or fourteen then, and of that age of adventure. He wanted to join the Army. He told me, They said if I had a christening certificate, I would be accepted. So I went home and found the one no one was using anymore and brought it to them. They accepted it.

To his mother’s surprise, he packed his stuff up, kissed her, then went to the schoolhouse to kiss his sister Mary goodbye. He then got on the boat with the recruiters and left the island for the first time in his life.

He only found out later that his name was now John. He told me, Cara, my love, I was amazed. I said, Who giveth thee the right to call me by my father’s name? He replied, Why it is on your papers, man! Papers was the law, my child. I had no wit to counter the man. And my father’s name was good to the ear.

John in the Army

From what he told me, Ed, John Jr. had a rather idyllic calm life in the Army. His first job was looking after the horses as that’s all he really knew to do. He was fantastic at his work, something like a horse whisperer. He first began to speak when he joined the Army, and when the unit he was with was posted to the mainland a few years later, he was sent to a school for the soldiers where they taught them English for the first time.

He wrote his first letter home at the age of eighteen. He didn’t know his home address, so he addressed it to his sister Mary, the school teacher. You can imagine how thrilled the family were to hear that he was doing well, now a man of letters and coming up in life.

About the age of twenty-four John was promoted to the big city, and then straight to London. It was an amazing ascent for a stable-hand but he was highly valued even then. His job was now something like a very high up bodyguard. He would be posted around Britain to accompany money and valuable items being moved from one place to another, and such.

The fact that he barely socialized, and spoke very little, raised his value astronomically.

When he was about forty years old, he invested his money in a house in the countryside outside London. He didn’t live there himself, renting it out to others, but it gave him a connection to a place and people there counted him a local.

Two years later, John was injured.... Don’t laugh Ed, this really happened... in an unfortunate smelting incident. He suspected foul play but there wasn’t any evidence of it so that was that. This accident had