Abinger Common: My Confrontation with an English Ghost

Abinger Common: My Confrontation with an English Ghost

(True Story)

      My wife, Karuna and I were met by her mother June, and her stepfather, Barry, who are English, at London Heathrow Airport for the start of a week-long sight-seeing trip in Suffolk.  The trip was intended to be a prelude to June’s birthday party and reunion of the British relatives.  Upon arriving, we learned that our original booking at a sixteenth century house had been cancelled due to an infestation of bird mites, but we had been transferred and upgraded to a beautiful Edwardian mansion at Abinger Common in Surrey, south of London.  The area was thickly forested with many one-lane roads and rolling countryside.  The house, called “Goddard’s” was a large two-story, “U”-shaped building made of traditional brick and roofing material, and had been designed and built in 1900 by a famous British architect, Edwin Lutyens.

     The inside was beautifully remodeled and restored. All outside and interior doors were solid wood and there were no doorknobs, but all had big metal latches which clanked loudly, reverberating off the hardwood flooring.  The place had electrical lighting and modern plumbing, but some areas received less light and were darker.  Everything was quaint, historical, and peaceful.  What could go wrong?

     Downstairs in the west wing of the “U” had the kitchen, dining room and “lounge” or living room.  In the middle was the meeting hall and the east wing a library that was closed off.  The 12 or so bedrooms were all on the second floor.  June and Barry stayed in a room upstairs at the end of the west wing, but Karuna and I found a room next to a hallway bathroom at the beginning of the east wing at the opposite corner of the U.

     Monday night was quiet, but I awoke at 2AM and could not get back to sleep until about 5AM.  I wrote it off to jet-lag, but the awake time did not match up with my sleep schedule in the U.S. Oh well.

     Tuesday morning, I awoke a bit tired and we went to meet June and Barry for breakfast.  Barry, who tends to be skeptical, mentioned that the previous evening, as he walked around the building through the English gardens and came to the end of the east wing, he looked up to the second story and saw an older woman looking down at him through the window.  He assumed that it was a care-taker or cleaning person from the Landmark Trust.  He said she appeared to him somewhat disapproving, like “what are you doing here?” 

     

I also mentioned that the previous night I had felt at least three entities in the house, a responsible older woman, a somewhat younger woman clinging to her or transfixed by her, and a man dressed like a caretaker or groundskeeper but from a different decade.

     We went to bed Tuesday night, and I could feel negative energy coming from the end of our wing, and I had the impression that there were one or more creatures with claw-like fingers trying to come up from the lower floor and from under our bed. I used protective affirmation-visualizations to suppress the creatures and the energy from the end of the wing, and managed to go to sleep.  This time I awoke at midnight and could not go back to sleep until about 5AM.

     On Wednesday, during the day, June said she had smelled fresh mothballs on Tuesday evening.  Also, on Wednesday afternoon, a representative from the Landmark Trust came to give us a tour.  She said the property had been built to be used as a vacation property for ladies of lesser means, we assumed like governesses, teachers, or widows, and administered by the church. The ladies reportedly were given three weeks each at the property which was overseen during the 10 years of the program by a full-time matron. Thinking of Barry’s visual sighting, I asked the representative about other guests or cleaning people being there that week, and were assured there were no other guests or staff in the building during our stay.  We all discussed that we might have been sensing or seeing the ghostly presence of the previous matron.

     Wednesday night, my wife and I were settled into our bed in our dark room, with the window open (there was no Air Conditioning) and everything was very quiet, no street noise, no evening bird chirping, nothing.  As we started to drift off to sleep we were startled by two loud wood knocks seemingly coming from the bed table next to my wife.  She said, “What was that? Did you do that?” I said it wasn’t me. Then I could feel something in the room and in some flashback to my army days I said something ridiculous like, “Our perimeter is breached.”  Then I had goose bumps and my whole body began tingling. I felt the matron “on me” or attacking me, and also saw the creatures with claw-hands again trying to come up from under the bed from below.  The matron was really angry and did not want us there. I felt like she was dark, dominating, and even predatory.  Although I was surrounding the space with Light, and affirming protection for all I was worth, I could only hold her at bay. I remember having the thought, “I don’t know if we can stay in this room.” Just then, my guides put the image of a small cross in my mind.  I instinctively imagined putting a large silver-white cross behind the bed facing outward, and three more, each on a side of the room.  In that instant, the matron “whooshed” like a shot from our room toward her end of the wing, and the tingling and negativity dissipated.  I thought she was repelled by the Light, but I felt more strongly that she was afraid of the “church,” and that they would discover what she was like and what she had been doing.  I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed into the bed.

     As an aside, I have always been frustrated with ghost shows on TV, where individuals spend a night in a haunted building, and taunt the entities to make them react and make things happen, partly for proof and validation, but mainly for exploitation and entertainment.  If the ghosts are people who died and are discarnate spirits trapped in a limbo-like state and not able to move on, then I feel we need to assist them in freeing themselves and helping them move to the light.  With that in mind, I reluctantly projected myself to the end of the wing, encountered the matron and said, “God forgives you, Jesus forgives you, I forgive you, and you are not a monster.”  At that moment, the matron was showered in white light and wearing a white robe or gown.  Looking up, she shot straight up and out of the building.  The energy cleared in our room and I fell asleep.

     The next morning, at breakfast we shared our Wednesday night experience with June and Barry, and they said that on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings, June had been in the downstairs bathroom in the hallway beneath our bedroom, and said it looked like something with small claws had put scratches on the toilet paper. 

     Thursday night, the energy was clear and relaxed in the building, and I slept like a log.  Friday morning there were no claw marks on the downstairs bathroom toilet paper.  I felt that the discarnate spirit that was mesmerized and dominated by the matron might have been a cook and I clearly saw her with light brown eyes and red hair and looking wide-eyed at me as if to say, “What happened? Where am I?”. I did my best to help her to the other side. I still felt the caretaker around but was not in contact with him.

     After breakfast on Friday, we packed up and headed for the family reunion in Cambridge, and I subsequently was able to catch up on my sleep and release the jet lag.  As a professional psychic, I regularly encounter the spirits of relatives and friends of my clients, and I have experienced spirits in castles and historical buildings in different parts of the world.  However, the intense nature of my four nights in Abinger Common caught me a bit by surprise. In retrospect, I am grateful if I was able to be of service to the spirits of the matron and the cook.

 

Joe Nicols

07/18/18