Previously: Big Foot, the Blair Witch, and a Ghost Who Just Wants a Sandwich.
It’s been a few months since our last examination of the strange and bizarre things “haunting” the Daily Mail, so let’s see what’s been going on lately, shall we? From haunted chairs to ghosts who have apparently moved out, it’s time for another round of ridiculousness!
1. Man Desperately Tries to Sell Vintage “Ghost Chair That Moves Around ON ITS OWN”
Back at the end of July/beginning of August, Andre Williams of Melbourne, Australia put up a listing on eBay for a vintage cane chair. The chair looks fairly unremarkable; however, it comes with a little something extra to make up for its bland appearance: A ghost.
About a week after he first acquired the chair, which he believed dated back to the late 19th century, Williams started hearing someone crying in his house during the night. At first, he thought he was dreaming; then he realized that every time he heard the crying, he found the chair on its side when he woke up in the morning. After a couple of years, it also started moving, and occasionally Williams found marks made by the chair “going up the wall and along the plaster ceiling.”
Towards the end of the auction, Williams posted an update to the chair’s eBay page. He wrote that he’d actually planned to cancel the auction “due to some recent weird events”; however, a psychic who contacted him informed him after inspecting the chair that it was a) from the 1950s, not the 1880s as he’d previously thought, and b) haunted by a little girl who wanted to apologize for something.
Is it really haunted? Probably not. Williams told the Daily Mail Australia that the auction “was meant to be a bit of theatre,” noting that “people get so caught up in [supernatural things[ that they want to make it true, they believe what they want to believe.” It was, he said, “a bit of experiment in human behavior and human psychology.” If it didn’t sell, his plan was to post it in another auction with a different story: “That could be fun, the changing personality of this chair,” he said.
For the record, the chair sold for AU $480 on August 3, 2014. Before the auction wrapped up Williams updated the listing again at one point to “apologize for trying to discredit this story through The Daily Mail”; he was, he said, “advised to do this as there could be dangerous consequences.”
Or it was all for a bit of a laugh.
2. The Moment “Ghost Van” Rolls Backward Through Busy Inner-City Intersection
Someone with a dash cam in Sydney caught this white van rolling backwards through the intersection of Alison Road and Botany Street earlier this summer. The catch? THERE WAS NO DRIVER. OMG, YOU GUYS, IT’S A GHOST VAN! Or, y’know, someone left the van’s parking break off. Happily, no one was injured during the incident.
3. Is There a Black Country Triangle?
Between 2011 and 2013, the West Midlands Police have received a whopping 71 reports of ghosts, witches, and zombies, in spite of the fact that the Black Country has officially been declared werewolf-free. These reports include 15 sightings of ghosts, 55 incidents of witchcraft, and two zombies. A local paranormal society, the West Midlands Ghost Club, believes “it is fair to say that there is a Black Country Triangle.”
For some reason, this is news. Who cares about all the other screwed up stuff that’s going on in the world? ZOMBIES!
One of the people interviewed for the article, 35-year-old mother of three named Michele Bardsley, told the Mail about the UFO she filmed above her home back in May. I’m not saying Michele Bardsley isn’t a really person (and if you are, Michele, I apologize for suggesting otherwise) — but I’m not going to lie: Sometimes I wonder whether the Mail makes people up so they can “interview” them.
Also, yes, that does appear to be an image of Bellatrix Lestrange illustrating the article.
That? Is quite possibly my favorite headline in the history of everything. The house in question is called Denfield House; located in St. Helen’s Park in southwest Sydney, Australia (lots of our tales this week are from Australia, aren’t they?), it was built in 1837 and formerly owned by a woman who never went to bed until her husband did, too. Her ghost liked to hang out in the kitchen, although its current owner, Steve Laws, says he’s never seen her. That’s apparently what led the Mail to believe she’d moved out.
Or the Mail was just grasping at straws to begin with. Denfield house was apparently once owned by a man called John Farley, who is known mostly for once seeing the “ghost” of a missing man, Fred Fisher, sitting on the rail of a bridge. Farley died in 1841, after which the house was sold to magistrate John Bray; in 1866, another Bray relative, Joshua, wrote about a robbery that occurred in the wee hours of the morning. I’m not totally sure how we get from there to a ghost woman living in the kitchen, but, well… it’s the Daily Mail.
5. British Boy on School Trip to German War Cemetery Captures Ghostly Image on His Mobile Phone
Oh, look! Another ghost photo! This one was snapped by 14-year-old Mitch Glover during a school trip to the Neuville-St Vaast German war cemetery near Arras in northern France. It’s believed that the “ghost” is a Scottish soldier, although how anyone is able to pick out any details that scream “SCOTTISH SOLDIER!” from the tiny, blurred image is anyone’s guess. Me? I think it’s a light splotch, a movement blur, or a little bit of strategic Photoshopping. Same old, same old.
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