The (True？) Medieval Ghost Stories of William of Newburgh

A certain man died, and, according to custom, by the honorable exertion of his wife and kindred, was laid in the tomb on the event of the Lord's ascension. On the following night, however, having entered the bed where his wife was reposing, he not only terrified her on awakening, but nearly crushed her by the insupportable weight of his body. The next night, also, he afflicted the astonished woman in the same manner, who, frightened at the danger as the struggle of the third night drew near, took care to remain awake Still he came. This isn't an excerpt from a modern or Victorian-era ghost story. It was written over eight centuries ago, and was believed to be true by the man writing it. That man was William of Newburgh, a twelfth-century Anglo-Saxon historian who wrote Historia Rerum Anglicarum, or History of English Affairs, chronically in the history of England from the Norman conquest of 1066 until his death in 1198. Most of his work dealt with the deeds and lives of the high and mighty, like kings, bishops, and other people who weren't chess pieces. Unlike most historical works of the time, William's wasn't made at the behest of a patron whom he would have to appease and glorify, and so his writing is considered to be refreshingly fair and balanced, and relies on factual accounts as much as is able. To that end, he spent the first few paragraphs heavily criticizing Geoffrey of Monmouth, accusing him of presenting as fact the story of King Arthur. He calls Geoffrey's writings Good thing people these days aren't so stupid as to believe obvious falsehoods just because they reinforce their own patriotic leanings. Right? Anyway, mixed in with all the historical accounts are a curious collection of stories about men returning from the dead to haunt the living. Such stories weren't uncommon in William's time, and before, but his attention to detail and overall credibility lend these stories a little more weight. Which isn't to say that any of the tales you're about to hear were actually 100% true. Dead people stay dead, after all. But the learned, evidence-seeking William believed them to be true enough to include in his writings, and in doing so, likely played some small role in reinforcing people's belief in the undead. Let's see if we can't go a little deeper, and extract some truth from the myths, as we explore William of Newburgh's Medieval Ghost Stories. Let's begin with the tale I relayed at the start of this video. While lying in bed, the woman said she was being People are similarly affected today, but it's not because of ghosts. Sleep paralysis occurs when a person wakes up but can't move, sometimes for several minutes. Its exact cause is unknown, but it can be brought upon by stress, such as the stress of recently losing one's spouse. It sometimes comes with hallucinations or waking dreams, where you might imagine a presence in the room with you, such as a being sitting on your chest that keeps you from moving. It happened to me once, many years ago. Fortunately, it was morning, and just about time for me to wake up anyway, so I was fully conscious, but I can imagine how terrifying it would be in the middle of the night, when it's dark and you're only half awake. With that part explained, let's move on to the rest of the story. It says that the woman's husband kept coming to visit her and his brothers, but was kept away by the people watching over them. He then At this point, if I had to guess, I'd say the hysteria of the walking dead man had spread enough that other people began to imagine seeing him, or maybe they were just playing a joke. What do you mean you can't see John? He's right there! A bishop wrote a letter of absolution and commanded it to be placed upon the man's body. So the sepulchre having been opened, the corpse was found as it had been placed there, and the charter of absolution having been deposited upon its breast, and the tomb was once more closed, he was thenceforth never more seen to wander, nor permitted to inflict annoyance or terror upon anyone. In other words, once a wise man, the bishop, told everyone the matter had been dealt with, people stopped blaming the dead man for their troubles. Is it possible strange things kept happening in the town? Did the wife continue to experience sleep paralysis? Perhaps, but the people would have gone with different explanations, or simply kept it quiet now that the wandering spirit had been dispelled. This exorcism was, by far, the least messy of the methods used to quell the disturbances brought about by the walking dead, as we'll soon see. That tale took place in Buckingham County, in the south of England. William's next ghost story is placed in the town of Berwick, on the border with Scotland. In this town a certain man, very wealthy, but as it afterwards appeared a great rogue, having been buried, after his death sallied forth, by the contrivance as it is believed of Satan, out of his grave by night, and was born hither and thither, pursued by a pack of dogs with loud barkings, thus striking great terror into the neighbors, and returning to his tomb before daylight. Rather than consulting a holy man, as the people of Buckingham had done, the Berwickians procured ten young men renowned for their boldness, who dug up the man's corpse, hacked it to bits, and burned it. While the immediate problem ceased, there was, a short time after, a pestilence that affected all of England, but, according to William, never did it so furiously rage elsewhere. William does later write of a famine and pestilence striking all of England in the year 1196, so it's possible that the dead man might have been blamed for the sickness after the fact, at least locally. Imagine you survived the plague, and a short while later are talking about it, saying something like, everything was fine around here until so-and-so rose from the dead, he terrorized the town, whipped the animals up into a frenzy, and oh by the way, brought the plague down on us. In other words, how much of the story was contemporary, and how much was crafted after the fact to explain the catastrophe that followed shortly thereafter. William next turned his pen to the tale of a chaplain, who, having little respect for the sacred order to which he belonged, preferred to ride around the countryside and hunt with his hounds, to the point that he became known as the Hunda Priest, or Dog Priest. After he passed away, to little grief from his fellow holy men it seems, he terrorized the noblewoman he had served in life, unleashing loud groans and horrible murmurs around the bedchamber of his former mistress. She enlisted the aid of a pair of friars at Melrose Abbey, where the dead man was buried, who themselves called upon two powerful young men to stake out the grave of the deceased and prevent him from rising. They enacted their vigil on a cold night and, part of the way through, three of the men adjourned to a nearby house to warn themselves, leaving the fourth to stand guard alone. Belief in ghosts and evil spirits was common, but as today there were skeptics. If they were truly concerned, would they have left the one man out there all by himself? It's easy to imagine three members of this little group muttering, what are we doing out here anyway, and going off to find a fire to heat up their numbing fingers and toes. The fourth may have stayed out of earnest belief, or simply so that they didn't appear completely neglectful in their duty. As is the case in any horror movie, once someone is left alone, that's when the monster strikes. According to William, the devil roused the corpse, which rushed to the lone remaining guardian. The man struck him with an axe, forcing the fiend to flee. He chased it down and commanded it to return to its tomb, which it did. Upon hearing the noise of battle, the other three men returned. It's eight centuries later, but I can still hear their companion reading them the riot act for banning him to the monster. The next morning they opened the tomb and... Found the huge wound it had received, and a great quantity of gore which had flowed from it in the sepulchre. And so, having carried it away beyond the walls of the monastery and burnt it, they scattered the ashes to the winds. These things I have explained in a simple narration, as I myself heard them recounted As with other cases of the dead rising to life and menacing the living, it's easy to imagine that the woman was haunted by visions or hallucinations of the dead monk. When she expressed her fears to the other monks, they might have taken pity on her and agreed to their nighttime vigil, at least in a show of good faith. The man wasn't really going to rise from the dead, however, so they made a show of the battle with the revenant, limiting it to one of their number so that only he would be technically telling a lie. The noblewoman accepted the story and, now that she knew that the hundred priests had been sealed away for good, was troubled by him no more. William's final ghost story is also the most salacious. He claimed that it happened at a castle called Anantis. Its exact identity is up for debate, with some thinking it referred to Annan Castle in southern Scotland, while one 20th century scholar identified it with Alnwick Castle, about 100 miles to its east in northern England. The story was related to William by an aged monk who supposedly had personal knowledge of the events. A certain man of evil conduct fled from York to Anantis, where he married a woman who was unfaithful to him. He concocted a scheme to catch her in the act, pretending to leave for a few days, but instead sneaking back to spy on his wife. He got himself up on a beam above his bedchamber, where he saw his wife doing the deed with another man. That apparently got him so worked up that he lost his balance and fell. The other man immediately ran away, leaving his wife to clean up the mess. Her husband was still alive, and he had enough of his wits about him to berate her for cheating on him, but she soothed him as best she could and convinced him to rest from his injuries. Being much shaken by the fall, and his whole body stupefied, he was attacked with the disease insomuch that the man whom I have mentioned as having related these facts to me visiting him in the pious discharge of his duties, admonished him to make confession of his sins, and received the Christian Eucharist in proper form. But as he was occupied in thinking about what had happened to him, and what his wife had said, put off the wholesome advice until the morrow, that morrow which in this world he was fated never to behold. For the next night, destitute of Christian grace, and a prey to his well-earned misfortunes, he shared the deep slumber of death. Climbing up on a beam to spy on your cheating wife and suffering mortal injuries in a fall seems like a rather convoluted way to go. The only witness to the man's actions were his wife and her lover. Is it just as possible that he barged in on them, and a fight between the two men ensued, and the woman used the fall narrative to cover up her lover's direct part in her husband's demise? That might be a bit more plausible. A Christian burial indeed he received, though unworthy of it. But it did not much benefit him, for issuing by the handiwork of Satan from his grave at night time, and pursued by a pack of dogs with horrible barkings, he wandered through the courts and around the houses while all men made fast their doors, and did not dare to go abroad on any errand whatever from the beginning of the night until the sunrise, for fear of meeting and being beaten black and blue by this vagrant monster. But those precautions were of no avail, for the atmosphere, poisoned by the vagaries of this foul carcass, filled every house with disease and death by its pestiferous breath. A local monk gathered together a few holy men to discuss the happenings on Palm Sunday, and as they were having dinner, two brothers burst in on them. The young men had just lost their father to the plague, and feared they, and everyone else in the town, would soon follow him into the grave. Digging up the man's corpse, they found it much shallower than they expected, and it was swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood, while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces. As we now know, recently buried corpses can appear surprisingly lifelike, bloated with gases and still with liquid blood. Back then, however, such signs were clear evidence that the corpse had been rising from its grave at night and terrorizing the living. They hacked away at the body with their spades, took it outside of the village, and burned it, thus, according to William, ending the pestilence which had troubled the people of Enantis. Many of these stories contain common elements, barking dogs accompanying the revenant, it being discovered and full of blood, being hacked to pieces, and then burned, that it's easy to imagine that there was some commonality between them, similar to how myths and legends can spark regional variants that take on their own identities many years down the line. The Berwick and Enantis stories sound especially alike, adding the elements of a plague to their narratives. If Enantis does mean Alnwick Castle, it's perhaps no coincidence that the two places are only about 30 miles apart. William's informants in many of these cases were holy men, who would have also seemed fit to explain the incidents as punishment for straying from God's path, and as warnings that one should live a virtuous life, lest you become a restless spirit yourself. Some people would have earnestly believed them as true, but maybe they were fiction from the start, and their tellers knew that. A thousand years from now, what will people think of our stories about Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger? Will they think they are based upon real people? Or that they actually happened as they were described? Which isn't to say that you can't enjoy chilling tales like these as they're presented, real or not. Just try not to take them too seriously, advice that 8-year-old me probably would have found very helpful. Thank you so much for watching this video about William of Newburgh's medieval ghost stories. If you enjoyed it, give the video a like, and subscribe to my channel if you want to learn more about the true history of fantasy. Until next time, if you're trying to catch your cheating spouse, just hide in a closet. It'll be a lot safer than the alternatives.