MANSFIELD HOUSE
Location: The Old Mansfield House is part of Millionaire's Row, a
neighborhood of the most expensive and abandoned homes in London, England on
Bishop's Row running between Hampstead Lane (B519 Highway) and Highgate (A1
Highway) in North London.
Situated at 69 Bishop's Avenue on the corner with B519 Highway, the structure is
six miles (548.64 meters) from Tralfalgar Square via the A400 and A502 Highways.
An earlier description from the files of Cyrus P. Zorba erroneously
places the house in Kensington on London's East Side near Holland Park.
Description Of Place: An incredibly elaborate white three-story
Victorian structure, the crumbling edifice includes turrets, balconies, pitched
roofs, numerous fireplaces and garret windows overlooking similarly extensive
grounds with stone pathways and porches around an elaborate garden echoing many
of the fine palatial verandas in England. Now filled with weeds, unkempt hedges
and wild brush, the grounds are now a virtual labyrinth of ascending and
descending paths including three bridges and a dried brook that once ran the
property. The interior of the structure, however, is a terrifying collage of
ruined rooms filled with trash and exposed walls and ceilings deriding what was
once the opulence of the castle-like mansion. Damages include holes in walls,
vines crawling into empty rooms, soiled carpets, the remains of dead animals and
an overwhelming stench of urine and stagnant air. Although the former residence
has long been boarded up, rumors are there is a concealed entrance into the
structure somewhere on the confusing grounds, now claimed by stray cats and dogs
from the neighborhood.
Ghostly Manifestations: It's a ghost story many people have told and
several more have likely seen on television and in the movies. It's the story of
a lonely little man presiding alone in a vast spacious mansion large enough for
a family of ten or twelve, but its sole owner isn't married nor does he desire
to be. He has no conceivable heirs except for a nephew whom he barely knows. All
he really has is his job, and every day he rises to meet another day, take a
carriage to his place of business and after eight or ten hours return to the
mansion to retire for the night once more alone. It's not a large walk, after
all he walked it at one point in his life, but in his old age, his legs have
started to hurt a bit more and the cold has learned to pierce his body even
stronger. However, on this one day in December 1822, things appear a bit off. On
arrival to Mansfield House, he hears the sounds of whispering from the grounds
and the distant thunder of horse hooves on the cobblestone entryway behind him.
As he fumbles with the keys to the front doors, the door knocker briefly looks
like a face of disdain staring back at him, but the lone occupant is not
distracted. It his just his imagination.
Once inside, the owner fights the early vestiges of sleep and looks the doors behind him. He has turned the first floor into a warehouse. The shapes of crates and boxes of merchandise fill the foyer and dining room. The parlor itself is crowded with boxes except for a narrow walkway to identify the contents of the items in storage, but once again, something seems off. He hears a faraway gasp and even senses the feeling a being watched. Barely halfway up the stairs, the owner suddenly scrambles up the stairs past bed posts against walls and rooms with stacked furniture. In his bedroom, a quick fire is lit in an old fireplace, and a small stew acquired for dinner is heated over the blaze. Despite these lonely comfortable surroundings in a solitary room of an empty house, something still feels off. Distant bells ring out twilight from beyond the dingy walls and meager possessions. Who is this lonely man hoarding these possessed belongings? Why does he live such a solitary isolated life? The distant bells ring even more closely now, and as this strange hermit looks up, he realizes its the old servant bells ringing loudly in the room themselves, but the old brass bells are now tinged with age and cobwebs. Their cords decayed years before. What could possibly be ringing them now? The current owner of the house cries out from his chair by the fire, ordering them to stop, and they do in a sinister fashion. They come to a dead stop as if they were not ringing at all. It's a nervous disconcerting reprieve. The empty house remains eerily tranquil for just a while longer for the homeowner to finish his small amount of stew, sip a bit of wine and consult a few business notes before retiring for bed. Dressed in a long night dress, the mansion's sole resident lies in bed just barely a few seconds before activity is riled up once more. From far down the hall at the opposite end of the house, there is a loud pounding noise as if someone is smacking an adjacent door with the palm of his hand, but the rhythmic beat instead turns into what could only be footsteps of someone approaching the room. Someone knows he's home, and as the lonely hermit buries himself deeper into bed, pulling his bed sheets up under his chin, he also reaches out blindly for his cane by the bed to use as a weapon if he should have to fend for his life. In the darkened room, the sounds of one latch then another slide over by themselves. The house is filled with what sounds like someone's breath, but it's as loud as a strong gale or gentle breeze. The door is suddenly thrown wide open revealing the luminescent apparition of a man in period attire and a long rag pulled up under his jaw and tied into a knot over his head. It's the old miser's former business partner, the former owner of the house who had passed away from this mortal coil just one year ago this month.
While it's not a popular theory, many paranormal researchers believe Charles Dickens was inspired by this ghost story from Mansfield House for his iconic novel and masterpiece known as "A Christmas Carol." Furthermore, paranormal historian Plato Zorba describes renowned author H.G. Wells having visited the location three times during his life, apparently seeing the stages of neglect in the house might have inspired him to write "The Time Machine." Bram Stoker might even have knew the house's reputation as a haunted edifice, considering it a home for his famous literary character before switching to Carfax Abbey in the novel, "Dracula." Despite its importance to three literary giants, Mansfield House is now but a shadow of what it once was: a once great structure that has been allowed to degrade into a British suburban ruin within a forgotten neighborhood of decaying historic homes.
Zorba is known to have attended séances held in the house during the Thirties trying to contact the house's numerous spirits, but he later concludes the ceremonies held in the old structure might have actually exacerbated the existing phenomenon there. He reports watching a table during one séance that lifted itself off the floor and flung itself into the wall. Loud shrieks and clanging chains that echoed from the upstairs rooms. Persistent shadows and fleeting images of nonexistent people racing around corners or vanishing through closed doors. During an over-night investigation, the dining room filled with a cold mist that somehow high-lighted the shadows of non-existent people in a room filled with only five people. According to Zorba, "as my eyes adjusted to the numbness of what I was feeling, I and the other investigators were slowly being made aware of the shadows of people joining our company. By what I could see, I could see the darkened outlines of two gentlemen in period dress, an elderly gaunt lady in Victorian dress by my left and then a younger stale version of a female servant, perhaps a maid, several feet behind me near the fireplace. I could see no features of these people; it was as if I was seeing living negatives of photos given substance. There was only five of them at first, and then there was seven, maybe more. I was not scared... perhaps stunned, even excited. Where this ethereal smoke seemed the thickest, more shadowy figures overwhelmed us. It was not my impression they were trying to scare us, merely make themselves known, but as I mustered my courage to try to speak, the photographer tried capturing an image, spoiling the greatest supernatural moment of my life, for in that one flash, everything vanished."
Zorba returned to Mansfield House trying to recapture evidence several times during the Fifties, ingratiating himself into the Essex family who now owned the property. They shared a few random stories for him, but Zorba always felt they they were holding back much more bigger stories of darker content. Walton Essex, the family patriarch, described a light in an unused room that was always burning by itself, despite all claims by the family that no one ever entered that room. It could be seen burning from the driveway entrance, and even with the entire house sound asleep, he would head up to the third floor to turn it off only to hear it click back on when he was barely back to the second floor.
The house was also notorious for sounds. Furniture often creaked as if someone were sitting in it, and closed doors were heard opening even if they were found completely locked. The family often heard voices of what they expected to be company, only to enter rooms expecting to find friends and find them empty. The sound of chopping often came from the foyer as if "somewhere whittling their way through the heavy oak door with a hatchet trying to get inside the residence." At night, footsteps were heard coming and going up the stairs all night long. Rudyard Essex, Walton's brother, whose bedroom was next to the second floor landing, once rose very upset by the noise to find out what the ruckus was about and flashed open the door expecting to find someone on the steps. His anger was instead met by dead silence and uneasy stillness, but as he slowly closed his door ready to pass it off, he heard the sound of an unseen ladies skirts dragging on the carpet.
Zorba also writes: "The dining room was the most interesting room in the mansion to me. With its high ceiling, it was large enough to be a ballroom. It had this spiral staircase in one corner up to a balcony on the second floor, and a fireplace in the center of the room flanked by the doors heading out to the back veranda. It had all these niches for small statues or pieces of artwork but were instead filled with potted plants. For some reason, they were always dying. I was there one day as I watched Iola Essex place new flowers in the pots, and as I was getting ready to depart, I stopped to take notice of the flowers which were wild orchids, and they were already looking sour and starting to wilt.
"Outside the room, there was a large floor length mirror that was made part of the house. It was actually part of a much larger cabinet and set of shelves possibly used to hold a family's coat of arms, but the Essex Family instead used it to display several books and family artifacts. Iola told me that the proximity of the mirror to the dining room always seemed weird to her, and she wanted it removed because she was always afraid she'd be looking into it and find someone sitting behind her that shouldn't be there.
"In an odd happenstance, Iola enjoyed sitting in the dining room by the small table there sewing and sipping tea as she gazed out to the activity in the distance. On this one day, she was feeling most bothered by the mirror outside in the hall and could not stop herself from looking at it no matter how hard she tried. After several minutes of ignoring it, she happened to glance up and catch a brief image of a small child standing and watching her who suddenly bolted down the hall. It was so quick and so fast, but she could still tell how the boy looked like, an eight-year-old boy with short blonde hair in faded blue attire from the Middle Ages."
During the time the Essex family lived in the house, they barely used or ventured to the third floor which even then was crowded with abandoned furniture and toys against the walls or perched precariously against the top railing of the staircase. Sounds from up there were not uncommon. Footsteps, pounding noises, whispering and even brief faces peeking over the top were frequent reminders the family shared the house with something. Zorba describing it as always cold even as the outside temperature in London was nearing ninety degrees. His breath always formed in the air up there but no where else in the house. One day, he felt he was being followed as he tried tracing his steps from the main staircase to the servant's staircase in back of the house. Whatever presence behind him seemed to be breathing heavily as if it were out of breath, but as he turned to pass a corner, he happened to glance back and discover nothing was there.
"It was just cold dark empty air." He describes. "However, as I turned my head up, I nearly missed a reflection in a picture frame from ahead of me. Something dark had just rushed into a room and slammed the door behind it, but as I raced ahead, briefly stumbling over empty frames on the floor spilling in my way and throwing open the door, nothing was there, just a bare shadowy room with the shutters drawn to block out the sunlight."
Cut to the future, Mansfield House has
since become a ruin and a shadow of its former self. Soft-spoken
Charles Stewart of the Ravenhurst
Trust, has long been the unofficial British ambassador to the CGS
and through other paranormal enthusiasts
has stayed on top of new and interesting stories for the team. In 2013, Steve
Barnette, Matt Oh and Andrea Welch were in London to meet and gather with other
paranormal researchers at the Bishopsgate Institute. Although Mansfield House is
considered private property under the local jurisdiction, Barnette was
allowed access to the exterior to wander the neglected gardens and paths and
take several photos. During the tour, Charles told the story about a figure that
appeared on the property in the Fifties and unerringly followed the same path
off and on for several weeks before vanishing under the bridge to the front
entrance. As Andrea was lamenting the degradation of the structure, Matt looked
up to the house and saw someone standing in one of the windows, hurriedly taking
a picture to catch it on film only to lose it. Despite the fact he thought he
caught the image on camera, nothing appeared in the photo.
History: Not much is known about Mansfield House except for what has
been collected by Plato
Zorba, and given his practice to wildly speculate as well as his inability
to verify his notes, what has been revealed is open to speculation. According to
Zorba, it was built in 1788, but later research into the activity here has him
pushing construction as far back as 1633. It was once the home for British
nobility until it fell into the custody of various lords and ministers until the
late 1700s when it was claimed by John E. Heggott, the man believed to be
the historical model for Dickens's Ebenezer Scrooge. Afterward, it stayed empty
for several years, sustaining damage by shells during World War Two. The Essex
family returning to London after the war claimed the house by providence; Zorba
claimed the family was related to the original owners of the house. The family had
the structure largely restored, and for a time, it was known as Essex House. In
fact, Zorba might have known Winston Essex, the last known resident. A writer of
horror novels and a collector of paranormal, occult and New Age works, Essex
filled the house with a museum of unique and odd books and curios, several pieces
of which were purchased by magician Jack
Marshak. However, Essex left the house to live out the rest of his years
making and serving as a consultant for horror movies in the Late Seventies and
Early Eighties. In his absence, the house deteriorated into worse condition than
before. It is speculated the grounds might be sold in the future or demolished
to make it more profitable.
It should be noted that during his time
in Hollywood that Winston Essex starred in the short-lived NBC-series,
"Ghost Stories," a "Twilight Zone"-like horror anthology
series specializing in stories based on the paranormal. In the series, the Hotel
Del Coronado near San Diego, California served as a substitute for Mansfield
House in the host segments. The Del Coronado is also known for its hauntings
concerning the ghost of Kate Morgan.
Identity Of Ghosts: There are no no known names for the figures
described haunting the structure, but Zorba identifies quite a few. However,
this list should be taken with a grain of salt considering his propensity for
exaggeration and mixing fact and fiction. Among his accounts are the ghost of a
young boy, Heggott's deceased former partner, a headless woman in Edwardian
dress, an old woman in a wheelchair, a spectral coachman with a lantern, a
woman's bloody corpse rising from a bath, a reported elemental, twin girls,
a nude woman standing in the pond and spectral heads hanging from the trees
amidst other revenants and spectral walking cadavers.
Source/Comments: A Christmas Carol/Scrooge (1938/1947/1951/1954/1970/1999/2009)/Ghost
Story/Circle of Fear (1972-1973) - Activity based on Highfield Hall in Truro,
Massachusetts, Chillingham Castle near Alnwich, England, the Jamaica Inn in
Bomin Moor, England and Steep Park House in Crowborough, England.