By David Siddall

JOURNALIST and ghost expert Laurie Kemp says West Cumbria is largely ghost-free.

He says: “Whatever happened to those engaged in the old Triangular trade? Surely they cannot be sleeping the long sleep of the innocent!”

Mr Kemp is the author of Ghosts of Cumbria – published by Bookcase in Carlisle.

Just up the coast he adds that Workington certainly had a ghostly tale: “In its heyday Workington Hall was a building of some splendour; a massive mahogany door guarded the Great Hall – like all the doors in the Hall it was made from timber from ships wrecked on the Cumbrian coast – and the Pele tower had seven-feet-thick walls. It was an imposing building that took on a grim air when, in the darkness of night, the ancient building echoed to the strange noise of something bumping down the stairs.

It was the ghost of Sir Henry Curwen – better-known as Galloping Harry, ever ready to go galloping off on raids north of the Border.

“In 1570 Sir Henry was one of the army that gathered in Carlisle when Thomas Radcliffe Earl of Sussex, and Lord Scope, Warden of the Western Marches, raided Scotland.

Seven days later they returned, Galloping Harry boasting that they “had not left a stone house standing capable of giving shelter to armed men.” He also brought back a trophy, the iron gate from Caerlaverock Castle that hung at Workington Hall for centuries.”

It was in 1889 that the story of the things that go bump in the night was told by a later member of the family – John F Curwen – who said: “It seems that when Galloping Harry was nigh unto death a French lady and her maid took him by his heels and pulled the old man down the stairs to a lower room where they seated him in a high-backed chair.

“Telling the servants that their master was much better and not to be disturbed they immediately decamped with all the available jewellery and embarked in a small vessel from the harbour.”

The ghostly disturbance at the Hall was the sound of Sir Henry’s head bumping down the stairs!

John Curwen continued: “Fifty years later an old woman appeared in Workington and reported that she had been the maid, that their vessel had sunk off the Scilly Isles, her mistress drowned, the valuables lost, and that she herself, having been saved by a French fishing smack, had taken the veil to find peace in a convent and had now come back to unburden her soul and die.”

Much later on more ghostly goings on were authenticated by an impeccable witness when, in the ‘twenties, Isabel, last of that line of Curwens, was living at the Hall and had hosted a shooting party. Her guests were later having drinks in the library

Said John Curwen: “On the rug before the great fire lay a couple of which had been doing their day’s work during the shoot. The conversation flagged a little, then suddenly the two dogs rose to their feet and stared at the door in the corner of the room. The door was almost a secret one, cutting into one of the great library pictures, and it opened slowly.

“The human occupants of the room saw nothing, but the dogs had their eyes on something that which moved from the door to a vacant chair by the fireside.

“Then, for a while, they remained with their eyes fixed on the chair. The dogs then shifted their gaze as what they were seeing moved slowly back to the door which then closed and things returned - as nearly as they could in the circumstances – to normal.”

It was a sensation experienced by several visitors to the Hall.

There was no reason to doubt the tale of the dogs. It was told by the most impeccable of witnesses – the Reverend Canon Patricious Lamplugh Curwen, the Rector of Workington!

Laurie has carried out extensive research into the ghosts of Cumbria and can claim to have read all the dusty historic manuscripts and even seen a ghost himself.

That was in the days when he was working on the now defunct Carlisle Journal. The offices were between English St and Blackfriars St in Carlisle where Marks & Spencer now stands. Laurie returned late at night, after a convivial evening at the Crown and Mitre, aware of footsteps slowly descending an open staircase. No person was present, just the footsteps descending the staircase. Was it the ghost of a despairing editor, or one of the uneasy sprits buried in St Cuthbert’s churchyard? There were tales that the notorious bodysnatchers Burke and Hare had operated in the area in the 1820s and reports of empty coffins.

It takes a certain kind of sensitivity to investigate the occult and supernatural. Laurie is a hardened journalist, willing to confront the unknown, ready to follow wherever good copy leads.

The Ghosts of Cumbria is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com.