CRIMSON PEAK
Location: The exact location of the house is a matter of debate as
Allerdale was abandoned after World War Two, and Allerdale Hall (aka Crimson
Peak) was at least thirty miles from town in the red clay fields in the Cumbrian
Mountains of Northwest England. In the 1700s, Allerdale was a prosperous farming
community with a population of 1,273, but by the Late 1890s, it was little more
than a stagecoach stop for travelers moving from Manchester to Edinburgh. Today,
the only remnants of the town are a few abandoned wood structures, an old shop
with discarded debris and an old blacksmith shop populated by a horde of
bats. Without a defined distance, it is difficult to know just exactly
where the house, once said to be forty hours by horse carriage, is located.
Description Of Place: Not much is known about Allerdale Hall as no
photos survive of it All that is known about it is from the writings and diaries
of authoress Edith M. Cushing who lived there briefly in 1888. She describes it
as "standing alone on the pink snowy grounds of Cumberland County, a formidable
ugly black stain on the otherwise cloudy light blue sky covering the
earth." She goes on to describe it as Gothic Romanesque in style with a
Bavarian influence full of high ceilings, baroque furnishings, noisy
pipes, a rickety Otis elevator and a number of shadowy rooms around a massive
network of stairs with cracks and tears through the sinking structure and snow
falling through a broken foyer window overhead overshadowed by "spindly
chimneys and an angry dark tower cursing the skies."
According to modern accounts, the
current structure has since caved in on itself with only the bottom rooms intact
and the staircase having collapsed to the floor below which has been absorbed
into the red clay earth.
Ghostly Manifestations: Alternately known as Allerdale Hall, Crimson
Peak is one of those structures which cannot simply be visited by a paranormal research
team. Known exclusively from the writings of obscure novelist Edith M. Cushing,
who based three novels on the location, its location has been most effectively
obscured by history and by Miss Cushing's memories have been vigorously adamant about being
vague on its location. When the CGS tried to
track down Allerdale Hall
during a visit to England's Eel Marsh Manor in
2008, they crisscrossed the northern end of the Cumbrian Mountains of Northern
England by helicopter for trace of a deserted mansion in the open countryside,
but as yet, the location of Crimson Peak remains as elusive as Noah's Ark on the
peaks of Ararat.
By theoretical estimations, Edith Cushing moved to Allerdale Hall in the early days of December 1901 after the death of her father and her marriage to Sir Thomas Sharpe, a baronet in the lowest runs of the British aristocracy. From her earliest impressions, the grand old mansion seemed very opulent, but the interior was crumbling as the foundation of the structure was sinking into the red clay earth under the once grand edifice. Sharpe had tried keeping it erect with the small awards from his red brick enterprise mined from the ground under the mansion, but in return, the mining was slowly cracking the place in half over the creaking foundation. Edith recalls that the structure seemed to breath as the wind whistled over the chimneys. In her first hours, she recalls watching a dark feminine shadow casually strolling out of sight. She thought it was Thomas's sister, Lucille, but then she suddenly appeared from another direction. Edith thought then maybe she had seen a servant, but she was then told that "Allerdale Hall had no servants."
That night, Edith experienced yet another charming Gothic trait of the crumbling mansion, that of the old pipes groaning and grumbling with the underground red-stained water rising through the old pipes. As her husband said, "if you let it run a while, it clears up." Unfortunately, he had no such advice about the shadows roaming his home and seemed oblivious to their presence. Edith had no such qualms or aversions to the paranormal though. As a child, she recalled being visited by the spectral shade of her mother on the night of her funeral. Over the years, she had come to embrace the notion of life after death, and Allerdale Hall was proving to be an adventure to the senses. As she bathed in the shadowy old upstairs bathroom by candlelight, she was joined by a small dog she had adopted on arrival. As she rolled a ball to and fro from the tub keeping the dog entertained, she suddenly felt a presence, and on the fourth or fifth toss, the dog failed to returned to her with the ball. In her first account of this incident, she describes only feeling a presence, but in her second book, "Ivory Horizon," she revises her testimony to describe the spirit that visits her. As she watches, a tall cadaverous presence stained in shades of red and deep purple appears in the door of the bathroom, looked within at her and then retreated. Being the educated and strong-willed presence she was, Edith seems to have merely noted its rotted cadaverous appearance, describing it more as a "wild caricature of a human being, now stretched and distorted between the realms of death and the afterlife." She also notes the specter barely had a face, as if some force had caved in the skull of the tormented spirit.
Perhaps unaffected due to her attraction for spirits, Edith found herself exploring more and more of the edifice in the coming days and trying to milk her husband for details in the mansion's history and prior inhabitants. He remained difficult on some facts, reluctant to spill on details, but Edith still managed to explore the derelict structure, often when she was alone in the dark upstairs corridors. She was not allowed to visit the mines under the place, but it didn't matter. The spirits still seemed to seek her out. Perhaps due to her fascination for the paranormal, she was not taken aback by the activity. She documents that after a week in the old mansion she tried to open a closet in the upstairs hall. She had apparently befriended a stray dog on arrival to the property and had thought it had got locked in the closet, but as she turned to let it out, the dog suddenly appeared to her, and the closet door was suddenly jerked shut out of her hand. Taken aback by the incident, she looked into the closet, but found it practically barren. Closing it back up, she then took notice of yet another entity, this one covered in flailing long robes, pulling and fighting to release itself from the floorboards of the back stairway. As she describes:
"This wretched pathetic creature, more miserable and pathetic than frightening, struggling and fighting to pull itself from the floor. It couldn't walk. It could barely stand, as if it's legs would no longer work, yet it sauntered and hovered over its toes, now darkened and distended. It barely moaned. It's pathetic crying as it struggled to make itself known. I wonder what message it had for me that it would put itself through so much more misery to make it's appearance to me."
During her life at Crimson Peak, Edith was sick and nauseous constantly, limiting her ability to explore the house. Stricken to her bed, she was tended to by Lucy bringing her tea and oatmeal for dinner. She had several bad dreams while she was confined to bed of a dark figure watching her from the horizon, and when she woke, she would feel an unseen presence wandering around her. She tried running out in her robe and nightgown into the wintry storm buffeting Crimson Peak on one occasion, an incident blamed on sleepwalking. A trip out of town buoyed her somewhat, and during her third week in the house, she finally forced herself out of bed. Thomas was not by her side as she was gravitated to the sound of intense weeping and crying. Hovering off the balcony outside the room, she came face to face of a red-stained female specter clutching a crying infant to its withered breast trying to feed it. Looking back, she recalls asking the tormented spirit to leave her and pass over, but the wretched entity, seemingly noticed Edith for the first time, turned to her and held out a long spindly directed her to a part of the house which held Thomas's workshop. What she encountered is not exactly revealed in her writing, but in her recollections of these events, it is believed she discovered an incident that supported her fears about the house and convinced her to leave the house and her marriage.
After Edith departed, the Sharpe's caretaker, Lionel Finlayson, called "Finlay" by Thomas Sharpe, locked and sealed the structure up, expecting in his mind that the structure would somehow be passed on to new owners or be taken over by the village, but due to its remoteness, no such interest ever resulted. By now, both Thomas and Lucille had both lost their lives ("falling into the blades of their own lies and deceit and even their own contempt for each other" according to Edith). The condition of the house ripping itself apart might have also had something to do with it. In Finlay's letters to Edith in the United States, he wrote that he had seen "Sir Sharpe still ambling over the exterior of the property, the cold and ice not affecting him even in his light attire, as he wandered behind the abandoned dredging machines, and vanishing somewhere behind."
He also described hearing Edith playing the piano in the structure, even though he knew the place was empty and she was no longer part of the living. He never saw her, but the discordant sounds would echo through the structure and waft through the air for all to hear. In 1905, Edith was in London to endorse her first book "Crimson Peak" when she met Edwin Lathrop, the former postmaster of Allendale. He revealed to her that since she had left the area that Crimson Peak that several people had heard Lucille's phantom piano playing from the outskirts of the crumbling mansion. His stories might have inspired her last book, "The Stained Sky."
One story that does not come from the book originates from March 1911 as World War One was devastating Europe. An American flier named Captain Thomas Sharp (no relation) was flying lost over the Irish Sea and running low on fuel when he noticed a structure in the stark snowy plains of Northern England. He recalled seeing smoke wafting from one of its many chimneys so he dispatched the plane without incident within proximity of the mansion and hastened through the snow and ice expecting to be welcomed as a wayward soldier from the war, but what he encountered was not a warm and hearty welcome by the homeowner. On approach, he noticed the front doors blocked open by snow and ice, a light unbroken blanket of snow leading the way to the foyer area. Still expected some form of human presence to greet him, he pressed on further into the edifice.
By now, the broken window over the foyer had allowed the roof to cave in, opening the center of the house to a wild cavern of jagged wood, shattered walls and icicles covering the once noble building into a frozen winter cavern. Portions of the house were still intact, and despite seeing smoke from the house, Sharp found no signs of human activity in the deserted shattered domicile. Deciding to camp out in the house over night, he found enough food to sustain him and relit the old fireplace in the library for warmth, even poking through the mildewed and ruined library for something to entertain him.
Despite being alone, as night
encroached something made Captain Sharp want to be wary of his surroundings.
While eating his stew by the fire, he found himself constantly looking up and
surveying the empty area from the foyer expecting to see someone there. He'd
hear the sounds of something creaking through the house, the tinkling of piano
keys from an abandoned piano left on a weird angle by one broken leg, the
grating distant screech of an old elevator rusted in place and sometimes the
remote almost discernible voices of people talking in the shadows. Nevertheless,
he did not sleep well in the ruins. The worst part was camping in the presence
of the portrait in the library. Something about the way the illumination of his
fire dancing on it made him think the old woman in the portrait was watching
him, and if not her, maybe an unseen person in the foyer who vanished on
approach. At first dawn's approach, Sharp quickly gathered what he had and hiked
from the property until he caught up with a farmer five miles away. As he
departed, he noticed one thing. Although he was sure someone was watching him
from afar, the only footsteps treading the thin layer of snow in the structure
were his.
History: There is not much known about Crimson Peak. According to
Sir Thomas Sharpe, it was "hundreds of years old" and yet, it seems to
have avoided or missed scrutiny of the historic homes of England. It was last
owned by Lady Beatrice Sharp who passed away in 1879 when Thomas was 12 years of
age and Lucy was 14. Edith's second husband, Dr. Alan McMichael, was convinced
that Lucy had murdered her mother to get out from under her strict parenting by
bashing her head in with an axe. Lucy was sent to be raised in a convent
afterward while Thomas attended boarding school; as adults, the two of them inherited
Crimson Peak and eventually depleted its fortunes. After their deaths, locals looted as
much of the furnishings as possible, although legally, the property, it's
furnishings and Thomas's patents would have belonged to Edith. As recent as
1963, one of Thomas's ultra rare toy automata sold at Sotheby's for 25,000
British pounds.
Identity Of Ghosts: According to Edith Cushing, Crimson Peak is
haunted by the three previous wives of Thomas Sharpe, who married three wealthy heiresses
between 1887 and 1895, stole their fortunes and murdered them in the house with
the help of his sister, Lucille Sharpe. The first was Pamela Upton, a London
heiress whose father had been a wealthy landowner and contractor. Sharpe met and
romanced her in 1887, taking her home to Allerdale immediately after their
wedding where she was never seen or heard from again. By 1890, he was a widower
having depleted Upton's fortune and looking in Edinburgh, Scotland for a new
bride. He found her in the form of Margaret McDermott, who also vanished to
never be seen again. Sharpe's next misfortunate bride came to him as Enola
Sciotti, the widow of a wealthy restaurateur. Married by
1896, she too joined Sharpe to raise a child at his remote English residence, but by 1898, Enola
was no longer sending letters to her sister back home.
The infant, however, was not Enola's. Although Edith is distant from the more distasteful relationship aspects of her first husband to his sister, evidence of their incest is sprinkled in small clues through her books. When Enola Sciotti arrived at Crimson Peak in 1896, Lucy had an unnamed sickly daughter she was either unwilling or mentally capable of nurturing. Enola tried to save the girl's life, but whether she knew it was Thomas's child is unrevealed. However, it is known the child became another of many deaths in the house.
Cushing, however, is less specific
about the ghosts of Thomas and Lucille Sharpe, whose ghosts she only alludes to
in her third and last book, "The Stained Sky." According to the book,
Thomas wanders the exterior of the house, tortured and embittered by his
personal hell, while Lucille wanders the interior, cold, distant and complacent
to the house collapsing around her.
Source/Comments: Crimson Peak (2015) - Activity based on the
movie and the Greylock Mansion near Mount Adams, Massachusetts and Chateau de
Noisy near Celles, Belguim.