The Horsingdon Transmissions No.59: The Men From The Ministry

This squat brick building, enclosed with fencing marked 'No Entry', was apparently one of the 'listening posts' built by the Ministry of Defence (mentioned in an earlier post) at various sites in and around Horsingdon at the start of the Cold War. The purpose of these buildings  - in terms of exactly what they were listening for or how they were to complete this task - has never been disclosed.

This being Horsingdon, rumours nonetheless abound, one of which involves the claim that a strange low hum emanates from the buildings at certain times - and that this phenomenon appears to align with the occurance of other notable praeternatural events in the region; another holds that the government agency responsible for erecting the buildings was not, in fact, the Ministry of Defence, but another, far more secretive group only ever refered to by its representatives as 'The Ministry'.

Encounters with these Men From The Ministry were, it seems, typically marked by a distictly strange and sinister quality: one informant recounted an incident when two such individuals not only threatened to end his life should he ever reveal publicly any details of something he should not have seen, but subsequently made an even more disturbing and distressing threat of (what he described as) 'an existential character'. This individual, who died a few years ago, never did disclose what it was he had witnessed which so provoked the ire of the Men From The Ministry; nor would he ever elaborate on the exact nature of the peculiar threat that had terrified him so.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.58: Northwich Business Park

Northwich Business Park: all that remains are crumbling, deserted high-rise office buildings, haunted by the hollow ghosts of all the businesses which rented space here only to fail and go into receivership.

The lower portions of the buildings are covered in the alien script of an indecipherable graffiti, and in one of the edifices mannequins (the type which one would typically find in the display of a local high street shop) have been positioned so that they are staring vacuously through broken windows in the direction of Horsingdon Hill. Close inspection of the mannequins over time has indicated that someone has regularly been changing their positions, as if using them to act out some complex ritual circuit.

Multiple attempts to regenerate the area have proven unsuccessful, and have largely been abandoned by Horsingdon Council after a group of council workers, who entered one of the buildings to undertake a standard safety check in preparation for another planned phase of renewal, disappeared without trace. Even so, a few years back the council sent in another team to install some kind of antennae or transmitter on the roof of one the buildings.

Some locals claim that the collapse and urban decay that has so afflicted the area is a consequence of the site resting on a spot sacred to Those Who Wait (rumour has it that robed figures can be spied in the vicinity of the park on certain auspicious nights of the year); or perhaps the Horsingdon landscape itself has refused to countenance such a large-scale intrusion of modernity within its bounds, reclaiming and reshaping bare concrete and shattered glass as part of its own bleak and despondent topography.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.57: The Bunker

Locally known as 'the bunker', this curious building stands opposite the intersection between Eastcote Lane and Hallowmere Road.

The structure contains no windows, and only a single, unnumbered door. Whilst sounds are occasionally heard emanating from within the house, for years no one has ever been seen entering or leaving the building. My own investigations indicate that the house is owned by the Boreham estate, and that at one time it was the residence of Richard Boreham, James Boreham's one-and-only child - who, it is said, was born severely disfigured and of an unknown mother. At the time the latter fact apparently led to no end of speculation amongst the local populace as to Richard's parentage on his mother's side, eliciting sinister undertones regarding the possible involvement of Those Who Wait, or someother praeternatural agency, where his matrilineal line of descent was concerned. Whilst Richard Boreham's birth certificate - listing his mother as 'unknown' - is a matter of public record, I have yet to locate any documentation concerning his death or burial.

In his published letters, Roland Franklyn briefly alludes to the fact that, during his time in Horsingdon, he was able to secure an interview with the occupant of this building. There then follows a pause of about two weeks in his letter-writing, during which time he was in fact being treated at the psychiatric ward of Northwich Park Hospital for a severe case of (what at the time was referred to as) 'nervous shock'.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.56: Shortcuts and Alleyways

This alleyway lies off a back street near Eastcote Lane. Something terrible happened here once - so terrible that the locals refuse to speak about the matter.

This story and variants thereof are told throughout the borough regarding all such socially -uncolonised spaces; sometimes the tales even offer unambiguous particulars: like Shanklin Alley, they may be haunted by the inhabitants of monstrous otherwolds which intersect with ours, or by the vicissitudes of their own blighted histories. Some folklorists might attribute the use of familiar elements of the local landscape - and the counter-intuitive character of praeternatural events associated with them - to social processes of memorialisation: a means of collectively recollecting the otherwise banal (but nonetheless culturally-significant) aspects of local history and identity, enabling the ready transmission of these socially-significant narratives through ostension and retelling.

This is rarely the case in the Horsingdon Triangle.

In the Horsingdon Triangle, such tales often turn out to be true.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.55: Pathways

Amongst other things, Boreham Park is notable for its landscaped gardens. Formerly part of the Boreham Mansion estate, paved pathways wind around the gardens in what seems a straightfoward and easily navigable fashion; however, many a casual flaneur anticipating a pleasant stroll on a calm Sunday afternoon has found themselves confused - gripped, even, by a vertiginous anxiety - as the twists of the landscape seem to produce a sudden, unexpected topographical disarray, or strangely jumbled geomorphological entanglements that speak of a terrain born of a realm wholly unlike our own.

Supposedly created by James Boreham according to some unearthly and diabolic design, no one has been able to produce an accurate map of the pathways through the gardens - or at least no two maps produced of the area have yet managed to depict precisely the same cartography.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.54: Blackbirds

Blackbird Hill - also known variously as the witch-haunted Burn Hill and Crow Hill - has long been the habitation of a colony of crows, and is one of the points on both the Horsingdon Triangle as well as the recently-discovered Horsingdon Pentagram. Legend holds that the crows arrived soon after the ill-fated witch-burning of 1678, and that they now protect the local population from the powers that have subsequently come to haunt the hill. In return, it is said that the crows demand only that the soul of an innocent be offered up to them once each year on All Hallows Eve, so that they might renew their watch.

Local ornithologists, who have diligently documented the avian population of Blackbird Hill over the last two decades, have noted that the size of the colony has expanded by exactly one bird annually during this period.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.53: Overdue Books

Eastcote Lane Public Library. Along with Boreham Park Library, this once contained a very fine and extensive collection of esoterica, much of it detailing the occult history of Northwich and Horsingdon. The library was refurbished in the late 1970s, at which point said collection was removed to parts unknown for storage. The books were never returned after the completion of the renovations, and at the time a spokesperson for Horsingdon Council claimed that they had been misplaced due to an administrative error, and that their disappearance was 'pending investigation'. Needless to say, the collection failed to ever reappear.

Some have suggested that this formed part of a wider campaign involving the wilful erasure from public scrutiny of occult materials - especially those pertaining to the history of the borough - by Horsingdon Council itself. If that was indeed the case, it is cause for speculation as to exactly why the Council would feel the need to aggressively pursue such a course of action.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.52: Insensate Static

Curious aerials and transmitters populate the murky Horsingdon skyline, many of which appear to be without function, or are otherwise a hangover from the early Cold War period when the Ministry of Defense apparently established a number of listening posts in and around Horsingdon. If true, their purpose for doing so remains - like so much else about the region - vague and unclear.

That the landscape hereabouts is possessed of its own signal is, for most inhabitants of the Horsingdon Triangle, a given; but exactly what is being broadcast, and why, is a mystery. For my part, the soft static fry which laps gently at the borders of consciousness each night, like the comforting purr of a telephone bereft of its receiver, speaks of the insensate sound of a universe in which no-one and nothing is listening anymore.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.51: Chapel Perilous

A while back I mentioned that the police had been called to St. Osmund's Church after the discovery that one or more of the graves in the surrounding cemetary had been disturbed. On a return visit at dusk this evening, I discovered that the entire church had bern sealed off. The official explanation is that, due to subsidence, the entire church building has been rendered unsafe. The unofficial rumours hold that, during earlier police  enquiries, something was discovered in the basement of the church, and the building has been closed to the public pending further investigations by the police and Horsingdon Borough Council.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.50: Pareidolia

Another view of the Witching Tree on Hallowmere playing fields, framed against the Horsingdon skyline. There appears to be a spherical object to the right of the photo which I don't recall seeing when the picture was taken, as well as the faint image of spectral plumes rising from the landscape. Perhaps more chillingly, just below the branches on the lower left-hand side of the image, one can just make out what seems to see the vague impression of what looks to be the tortuously-stretched likeness of the eyes, nose and mouth of a human face.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.49: The Old Ways

Evidence of ritualistic activities discovered during a recent visit to Horsingdon Woods, in the vicinity of the wych elm; indeed, modernity’s incursions into the region have had little or no impact upon the practice of witchcraft and the keeping of the Old Ways amongst some sectors of the population.  

Note the intersection of the logs into a cross-like shape. Certain traditions hold that, during the Christian era, the cross or crucifix was typically trampled upon as part of the rites of witchcraft. This was less an embrasure of the Devil and all His works, and more a political act: the rejection of a false teleological futurity which welcomed apocalypse in favour of a timeless, traditionalistic primordialism (equally problematic in its own way). Either way, these are the artificial ways and doctrines of a species which mistakenly thinks itself significant in relation to topographies which are, in fact, wholly indifferent. As far as humanity is concerned, there are no ideological victors when it comes to the Horsingdon landscape, or to the Powers that inhabit it, or to the infinite worlds with which it intersects.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.48: The (Other) Wych Elm

My attempt to take a photo of the wych elm in Horsingdon Woods from which Mrs Bennett was hanged: the tree appears to be framed by an aura of strange light, and it seems as if the background of the photo is fragmenting or collapsing into some sort of constellation of fuzzy fractals - as if this tree and its clearing is a point of intersection with some other, terrifying unreality.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.47: The Wych Elm Pub

Haunt of dissident ufologists, heterodox folklorists, apostate ley-hunters, renegade psychogeographers, and other disreputable types, the Wych Elm pub sits along Horsingdon Lane at the foot of Horsingdon Hill - a stones throw from both the ruins of Whitton Green and Horsingdon Woods themselves, wherein stands the actual wych elm from which Mrs Bennett was hanged.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.46: Witch Steps

The name of the witch responsible for the blighting of Whitton Green is recorded as one Mrs Bennett who, it is said, made obseisance to Those Who Wait and other ancient powers at the wych elm that stands to this day in the nearby Horsingdon Woods; it is also said that grotesque clay figurines depicting such powers decorated the interior of her cottage in the days before the hamlet met its demise.

Elderly and widowed, and all of her children already gone to an early grave, Mrs Bennett had increasingly become dependent upon the charity of her neighbours. Wider social and economic changes had been sweeping through England at the time, and the hamlet itself had prospered, with most of its inhabitants pursuing opporunities to participate in new and profitable forms of mercantilism; the incursions of capitalism - even in its incipient forms - into the then-rural life of the region had, however, increasingly led to a re-evaluation of the social status quo which proved less than beneficial to the more needy inhabitants, resulting in a rash of witchcraft accusations levelled at those who were seen as a burden and a barrier to economic growth.

Where once the redistribution of goods was seen as both a moral duty and necessity, reciprocated via the less-tangible reward of affirming community solidarity, the desire to participate in the new, acquisitive economic modernity and increase one's capital (and thereby one's status) by selling surplus at the local market day had became too much of a temptation for the emergent middle classes in places like Whitton Green. In any case, accusations of witchcraft were made, the righteous indignation of the inhabitants of the hamlet was roused, and justice was swiftly and irrevocably enacted as Mrs Bennett was hanged from the highest branch of the wych elm in Horsingdon Woods.

That same night a great storm lashed the area, the fury of which causing great distress and significant damage to property in and around Horsingdon. More alarming was the fact that, the following morning, Whitton Green was discovered to be deserted. Every single member of the small community had, it seems, disappeared overnight.

Indeed, the question as to whether the demise of Mrs Bennett fully erased her baleful presence from the area remains unresolved: there is a series of steps leading from the crown of Horsingdon Hill to the clearing in Horsingdon Woods where the wych elm stands, along which a cloaked, bent and wizened old woman has often been spied, croaking evil words in an unknown language as she passes.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.45: Of Witchcraft and Whitton Green

Borders and boundaries operate according to fuzzy, uncertain logics. It is a dangerous business building at such places, incurring as it does certain debts and obligations to the landscape - and the powers which lurk therein - which are not easily fulfilled. Such was the fate of Whitton Green, a small hamlet built at the foot of Horsingdon Hill in 1751. Blighted by witchcraft, Whitton Green was soon reclaimed by the powers of the Hill; now all that remains are some old stone steps leading nowhere.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.44: Spiritual Warfare

Despite the wide doctrinal variance between many of the churches in Horsingdon, All Hallows Church in Northwich Park has remained a stalwart of Anglican traditionalism within the borough. Between 1964 and 1969, All Hallows thrived under the guidance of the charismatic Reverend John Broadham.

Of an evangelical bent, Broadham firmly believed that Northwich and Horsingdon were the the nexus of a very real spiritual conflict; quite literally embodying the priniciple of 'muscular Christianity', he brought a rather heavy-handed approach to the matter: not only being a vocal opponent of what he considered to be the impure and demonological doctrines espoused at other places of worship within the diocese, Broadham on occasion also became embroiled in physical altercations with those ministers and ecclesiasts whose credos he deemed an offence against nature and an offence against God. Apparently Roland Franklyn narrowly avoided a drubbing at Broadham's hands.

It didn't help matters that Broadham had been in the Royal Marine Corps, and had won a number of boxing tournaments during this time in the services. Rumour has it that his religious calling also came about as a consequence of his encounters with forces of a praeternatural variety which Broadham experienced during his participation in certain covert operations whilst in the military, and that his posting to Northwich Park may not have been entirely coincidental. In any case, the spiritual warfare Broadham was engaged in quickly turned both temporal and corporeal when, in 1969 after publicly criticising The Church of Starry Wisdom, All Hallows was destroyed in a fire. Broadham was believed to be in the building at the time of the conflagration, although no body was recovered. The church was rebuilt the following year, and dedicated to the memory of Broadham.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.43: Invisible Horses

Near the summit of Horsingden Hill at dusk, reputedly the final resting place of the Saxon king Horsa, and supposedly haunted by the spectre of his horse which legend holds was buried alongside him. Other tales tell of a herd of ghostly black horses with glowing red eyes, a monstrous fire-breathing black dog (after which the Black Shuck pub next to St. Ormund's Church is named), and the sound of something approximating the neighing of a horse - but otherwise entirely alien and grotesque in character - as variously manifesting in the vicinity of the hill.

Whatever the case, the hill has a long and tragic history, being the site of numerous murders and inexplicable disappearances, such that the locals tend to avoid the area at night.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.42: UAP over Boreham House

A luminous globule (the small spherical object towards the right-hand edge the image) photographed over Boreham House, near the boundary of Boreham Park, a few nights ago. Patrons of the nearby Black Shuck pub (which overlooks the cemetary of St. Osmund's Church) who, after closing time, happened to be walking past Boreham House around the time that the photograph was taken, reported hearing a strange, ritualistic chanting emanating from the upper floor of that building.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.41: An Ecumenical Matter

The 1950s and 1960s marked a decline throughout England of traditional forms of religiousity, with the cosmopolitanism of the time having bred a burdgeoning interest in new religious movements and alternative spiritualities. Nowhere was this more noticeable than in the Horsingdon area. This is, perhaps, understandable: strange places are, afterall, prone to producing strange creeds. Horsingdon locals have, in any case, only ever offered lip-service to the more pedestrian forms of Christianity that have attached themselves to the region,

Even so, the recent religious history of Horsingdon encompasses something of a revitalization of Christianity (even if that history is one of doctrinal non-canonicity and rampant non-denominalationism), with a significant number of evangelical churches and congregations appearing throughout the district during the 1960s.

Roland Franklyn, however, raised concerns at the time regarding the spiritual 'authenticity' of many of these churches, claiming that the espoused Christianity of these institutions was, in fact, simply a veneer overlaying other, more disquieting beliefs: beliefs which had, in fact, an unimaginably vast history in the Horsingdon area, along with very deep roots in the culture and consciousness of its local communities.

One such church was the Church of Starry Wisdom, whose congregation ensconced itself in St. Ormunds; another was the Church of the Throne of Light, which (according to Franklyn) was closely affiliated with the Starry Wisdom congregation, and which prospered to such a degree that by the mid-1960s it was able to build a dedicated place of worship along Eastcote Lane (not far from Burn Hill). For the new construction, Church elders commissioned a stained-glass window in a spectacularly-ugly modernist style as a frontispiece to their worship. In his letters, Franklyn denounces criticisms that the window - apparently depicting the very 'Throne of Light' that was central to the Church's doctrine - was nothing more than a cynical appropriation of abstract art as a means of appealing to an increasingly jaded and secularised audience; instead, he claims it is a literal representation of the Throne of Light as congregants typically percieved it whilst in the throes of religious ecstasy: a crazed and crooked morass of angles and jarring colours, roiling within vast abyssal chambers normally hidden from human sight at the centre of all creation, and the seat of a  nameless and pandaemoniacal numinosity from which all things flow.

That a nominally Christian sect should conceive of their God in such a confusing and tumultuous fashion seems remarkable - although Franklyn draws parallels with far older, lesser-known mythological and cosmological systems concerning Those Who Wait. For my part, I lack the theological authority to comment on whether there genuinely exists a link between the Church of the Throne of Light (which continues to operate in Horsingdon to this day) and older forms of local religiousity; for that, as the saying goes, would be an ecumenical matter.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.40: Ectoplasmic Plumes

An aerial photograph of Northwich Park, circa 1932. Strange forces coalesce about the scurrying intrusions of modernity into the primal, glacial rhythms of the landscape: note the diaphanous, ectoplasmic plumes erupting from the-newly constituted housing developments along what will become Eastcote Lane; also the ominous presence of a small black sphere toward the top left-hand corner of the image.