Any paranormal experiences or stories from the Somme?

[Michael Thomson]

Hello.

 

I came across a very old British documentary that appears to have been made in the 1990s in which a film crew took an historian and a supposed psychic medium (whom they claim had never visited the area) to the battlefields of the Somme and the medium gave his impressions of events which were then analysed by the historian. It was quite interesting but I am skeptical about it nonetheless.

 

In the documentary they mentioned what is now the Newfoundland Memorial Park and they filmed at the Sunken Lane too. 

 

I've read stories of Mametz Wood supposedly being haunted and of a landscape painter shortly after the war having a bad experience somewhere on the Somme,  but there seem to be surprisingly few stories of 'hauntings' etc for somewhere with such a violent past.

 

Has anybody heard any other stories or does anybody have a personal experience from the Somme? 

 

As I mentioned, I'm usually skeptical of these things but it is an interesting subject.

Edited 16 February , 2019 by Michael Thomson

[Michelle Young]

Very long thread here

Michelle

 

 

[Moonraker]

See this 2005 thread

 

 

[Michael Thomson]

Thank you both!

[IanA]

1 hour ago, Michael Thomson said:

a very old British documentary that appears to have been made in the 1990s

An oxymoron if ever I saw one. The 1990s was but yesterday. I remember the old king....

[593jones]

Dennis Wheatley, in his autobiography, claimed to have had an unpleasant experience on the Somme battlefield.  It's some years since I read it, but if I remember correctly he said he had the impression of something evil standing behind him but when he turned round there was nothing there.  Perhaps that triggered Wheatley's interest in the supernatural.

[AOK4]

I remember a visit with Egbert and someone else to the Somme quite some years ago to Mailly Maillet etc. Our compagnon de route believed in something and we even went to a cemetery during the night but of course nothing happened...

[Michael Thomson]

1 hour ago, IanA said:

An oxymoron if ever I saw one. The 1990s was but yesterday. I remember the old king....

Sorry IanA... I see what you mean so please accept my apologies. For someone in their 30s the 1990s was a long time ago. 

[Terry_Reeves]

2 hours ago, Michelle Young said:

Very long thread here

Michelle

 

 

See my post  no 18 on the link above. I need not say anymore

 

TR

[IanA]

2 hours ago, Michael Thomson said:

Sorry IanA... I see what you mean so please accept my apologies. For someone in their 30s the 1990s was a long time ago. 

No apologies needed. We were all young once. I think.

Edited 16 February , 2019 by IanA

[Michael Thomson]

The long thread is very interesting...people have had some pretty wierd experiences it seems!

 

Having visited the Somme on two previous occasions I can honestly say that I've never had any personal experiences at all, in fact much like so many others have said I've only ever felt a real sense of peace there which I can only put down to the fact that most people who visit do so out of deep respect for those who fought and died there. 

 

My wife has had two slightly unusual experiences in the Somme, not necessarily 'paranormal' but just odd,  both at the Newfoundland Memorial Park. The first was a feeling of very profound malevolence around her inside the visitors' centre. It started as she walked inside. She says she had no idea if it was connected to the place itself or an object as the visitors' centre contains a lot of very interesting artifacts from the battle and she was standing infront of one of the display cabinets when she began to feel it get worse. The feeling went away when she went outside, which she did quite quickly! I felt absolutely nothing unusual and stayed inside a bit longer to finish seeing the exhibits.

 

The second occasion was two years later, also at the Newfoundland Memorial Park. We had walked down from the entrance, past the Caribou monument and the Danger Tree to the small cemetery at the bottom of the slope. I decided to walk a little way beyond that point but she said she wanted to sit down for a few minutes and take in the atmosphere and watch the sheep and birds (a falcon had come to sit on one of the ropes cordoning off the 'no walk' area just infront of the cemetery). 

 

She put her phone's voice recorder on as she wanted to verbally document where she was and what she was doing and she left it running for a minute or so after she'd finished speaking. Granted it was windy and there was a light drizzle so you can hear wind and trees rustling but for a short period of the recording there is a series of very loud rumbling and thudding noises which suddenly stops. There were no other people around at the time and she said she never heard any noises and neither did I. 

 

I'm a skeptic as is she but I must admit it was a pretty wierd recording to listen to.

Edited 16 February , 2019 by Michael Thomson

[Scalyback]

I was at high wood and a lady started exclaiming "I can hear the gun fire, I can hear the bangs, it is so real!". 

 

Farmers out potting rabbits near by. 

[Michael Thomson]

We heard gunfire too... At Mametz and Delville Wood. Local guys clay pigeon shooting! We found dozens of broken clay discs and spent shotgun shells in the field below the Dragon Monument the next day.

 

I dare say the gunfire in 1916 would have been somewhat different!

 

 

Edited 17 February , 2019 by Michael Thomson

[Michelle Young]

There's a big exercise going on at the moment on Salisbury Plain, some impressive gun firing heard where I live which is maybe 20 miles as the crow flies. Went to Avebury on Friday and it was even louder. Led to a discussion with Mr Young about the pre Somme bombardment that was "heard clearly" on the south coast. How loud was it? 

[David Filsell]

For what it's worth, my first visit to the Somme was with two pals I had made at MFVA ( we all made models of military vehicles). In one area near the Schwaban  Redoubt one of the guys - now sadly deceased  - wandered off. He returned ashen faced after a while saying he had to get out of the area as quickly as possible saying he had just had a very scary experience and just had to get out of the area. He never explained what, then or ever after but he was certainly extremely very shaken. We left immediately but it was all most odd.

Edited 18 February , 2019 by David Filsell

[Moonraker]

20 hours ago, Michelle Young said:

There's a big exercise going on at the moment on Salisbury Plain, some impressive gun firing heard where I live which is maybe 20 miles as the crow flies. Went to Avebury on Friday and it was even louder. Led to a discussion with Mr Young about the pre Somme bombardment that was "heard clearly" on the south coast. How loud was it? 

The last verse of Thomas Hardy's "Channel Firing" refers to the sound of naval gunnery practice being heard:

            As far inland as Stourton Tower
            And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

 

This prophetic poem was written in April 1914. One might presume that Hardy chose the three locations because of their connections with British tradition: Stourton Tower being built in West Wiltshire in 1772 to mark King Alfred's victory over the Saxons in 879, Camelot being the legendary site of King Arthur's palace (popularly identified as being at Cadbury Castle in Somerset); and Stonehenge as the best-known ancient monument in the country.

 

Moonraker

 

[Sgt Stripes]

Not all experiences of Battlefields and cemeteries are bad or eerie. I have visited many Battlefields including the Somme , Ypres, Verdun Zulu and Boer wars and also the Crimea and have not seen or felt anything strange however many years ago on my first visit to the Battlefields of Salonika, the party I was with went to Karasuli cemetery where my relation in buried. I was the first to get off the coach and as I went through the gates I man came up to me and said do you have any relation here. He spoke in English  with a hint of Greek and was wearing a light grey suite Jacket and trousers and a white shirt. I thought he was a Commonwealth War Graves Gardener. I said yes I do and told him my relations rank and name. He said I know where he is, I will take you to him. We both walked up the middle of the cemetery which is on a slight hill and then turned to the right and at the end of the row there was his grave. I said thank you and looked down the hill to the gates to see the rest of the party just setting off through the gates up the hill. When I turned back the gardener was gone. I took photographs of my relations grave and put poppies down. I looked again down the hill and saw the gardener standing next to the coach driver. After a while we all started to walk back down the hill to coach. The organizer of the trip said did you find the grave ok . I said yes thanks to the gardener who met us when we got of the coach. He said what gardener and I said again the one who met us. He ask the party did anyone see a gardener when we got off and they all said no. I told him he was standing next to the driver talking to him however when we asked the driver he said no man came and stud next to him and he saw no other persons in the cemetery other then us. I have since been back to Karasuli cemetery on three occasions and nothing else has happened.              

[johnmelling1979]

There is another thread on this forum regarding    - Angles at the Somme

 

Angels at The Somme ?

By drummer, 11 July , 2006 in Other Great War Chat

 

 

[593jones]

2 hours ago, johnmelling1979 said:

There is another thread on this forum regarding    - Angles at the Somme

 

Angels at The Somme ?

By drummer, 11 July , 2006 in Other Great War Chat

 

 

 

Non Angli, sed Angeli.

[Ghazala]

“I had gone down to my cabin thinking to write some letters,” Harold Owen, brother of the poet Wilfred, wrote of an experience while serving on HMS Astraea. “To my amazement I saw Wilfred sitting in my chair . . .

 

“He did not rise and I saw that he was involuntarily immobile, but his eyes which had never left mine were alive with the familiar look of trying to make me understand . . . I went into a deep oblivious sleep. When I woke up I knew with absolute certainty that Wilfred was dead.”

[Ghazala]

In her book, Army Wives, Midge Gillies writes..

 

"After his son was killed in 1915, Sir Oliver Lodge, a pioneer in wireless telegraphy, wrote a book describing how he had got in touch with him through a medium. By the end of the First World War there were said to be 4.5m bereaved relations in Britain, and some 250,000 were attending seances to make contact with their dead sons and husbands. One of these was the engaging and bookish Clare Sheridan, who discovered a medium in Notting Hill soon after the death of her husband, Wilfred, a captain in the Rifle Brigade. On her first visit, she spoke to him for half an hour. The conversations continued until the day he objected to her plans to move to Turkey, after which, affronted by his bossiness, she ceased communication."

[zippy.72]

I stopped at Les Galets near Beaumont Hamel with two friends 20 years ago. One night we all woke up as there was a bright light shining through the window before dissapearing. The window faced away from the road and wasn't a car. We looked outside window but all was quiet.

[Doug504]

More than likely a local hunter with his spotlight, this is used to reflect from the eyes of rabbits etc. To conserve battery light is not used permanently. They are very powerful and can carry considerable distance, once switched off you are unlikely to see the hunter in the darkness.