Narrator (William Woollard): This is a series about the
unexplained. About things that are seen and yet not seen. About events that our
common sense tells us can’t possibly have occurred and yet they have occurred,
burned into people’s memories never to be forgotten. Our stories come from all
over the country. They involve people who didn’t have the slightest belief in
the paranormal until it forced its way into their lives. In this series we tell
their stories and we grapple with the uncomfortable questions which arise –
what is happening, what do these stories mean for our understanding of the way
the world works, and what does science have to say about it all? There are far
too many of these happenings for them simply to be brushed aside. They have now
to be confronted.
This is one of a maze of tunnels under the old Treasurer’s House
in the ancient city of York. It runs down into the cellars. It also happens to
lie right in the centre of the old Roman fort which occupied this site 2000
years ago. It was here one chill February morning that Harry Martindale,
plumber, was sent to run in a new set of water pipes.
Harry, plumber: My job was to knock a hole where this pipe
is here, through the ceiling. I came down and spent a whole day knocking the hole
through the ceiling. I had no idea then it was several feet thick, and I came
down here the second day and continued to knock the hole through the ceiling. I
had a short ladder in the centre of the floor here. And in the centre of the
floor was the original Roman road, and it’d been laid out in sections. And I
knew whatever it was, was old, but I had no interest in it. In fact I put the
base of the ladder on the Roman road. Just before lunchtime, I started to hear
the sound of a musical note. There was no tune, just a blaring of a note, and I
thought someone had a wireless on in another part of the building. And the
sound got louder and louder, and I realised that that the same time that the
sound was actually coming from the wall here. And when I realised this I just
glanced down (in line with my waist on the right had side here) and I saw that
a figure had come out the wall, and what I was looking at was the top of a
helmet with the plumes on.
Now I knew whatever it was, shouldn’t have been here in the
cellar with me, and through the shock and the terror of seeing this I just
stepped back off the ladder, landed on my backside, and then scrambled into the
corner of the cellar there. When I looked for the figure it was almost the
complete figure of a Roman solder. It came out the wall, walked at a slight
angle to the wall opposite, and as soon as he cleared the wall, then a horse
came out of the wall behind him with a Roman soldier sat astride. Now once the
horse had cleared the wall and was going through the wall opposite, then Roman
soldiers came out in twos - now I was in
no fit state to count them as if they were going into the ark, but there were
at least 20 of these Roman soldiers appeared here.
Narrator: This
extraordinary apparition took place in what must have been one of the busiest
parts of the Roman fort, on their north east gate running towards the main
barracks. The treasurer’s house, where Harry was in the cellar, lies on the
edge of that road.
Dr Patrick Ottaway, archaeologist: We’re standing now on Chapterhouse Street,
which is close to the line of the Roman ‘Via Decumana’ - that is, the main Roman
road which led from the north-east gate of the fortress (away in that direction),
to the headquarters building of the fortress (which is away to my left). And
York minster now stands on the site of the Roman building, and some twelve feet
below the great medieval cathedral, you can still see remains of the Roman
walls, as they were excavated in the late 60s. Immediately to my left here is
the cellar, and this is where the surface of the Roman road was found when the
cellar for was taken up, and this is where Harry Martindale saw the solders.
Harry: Now ‘terror’ is a difficult word - I think what I
felt in here was worse than terror. And I can assure you your hair does stand
on end, you can actually feel it! Because what I was looking at, although I
only had the one single light in here, what I were looking at were the same as
you and I, but the difference between
them and me, was … they were coming out of the wall, the wall didn’t exist as
far as they were concerned. The only other Roman soldier I’d seen prior to
this, is what we call, or I call, the Charlton Heston type - riding a beautiful
horse, very smart. These were the complete opposite. The first thing that
struck me was how small they were, they were very small indeed. Another remarkable
thing when they first came out of the wall - I couldn’t see them from the knees
down, until they came to where the Roman road had been excavated - then I could
see them from their sandals up. So much so, that when the horse came through
the wall, and when it was going across where the Roman road had been excavated,
I could see that the fetlocks of the horse were real bushy.
Narrator: It’s this kind of strange detail that lends
credence to Harry’s story. These ghostly soldiers ..walking on the old Roman road
surface, so only where the cellar had been excavated back to that level, could
he see them at full length.
PO: Over the Roman period the road has been remade and
resurfaced, and the ground level has risen. So I presume Harry has seen soldiers
of the late first century, that is, soldiers of the Ninth Legion, that were
here in York at that time.
Narrator: This man who knew nothing about Roman history or
Roman military equipment was able to give a detailed description of the soldiers’
appearance, right down to their weariness and the stubble on their chins.
HM: I wouldn’t say they were all that smart, although they did
all had the same uniform on. The metal helmet came right under the chin here,
and from where I was sat with the single light on, I could see there was growth
of hair here on the face. They had the coloured plumes coming out the top of
the helmet, and as they were going past I could see they were going down the
side of the back of the head here. They all wore the same thing. On the top on
the material were strands of leather all the way round, and the only thing I
can say they had on .. was a green coloured skirt. All of them carried a short
sword on the right had side, the side nearest to me, and it was a short sword
like an oversized dagger.
Narrator: Harry’s description, given very shortly after his
experience, was examined in great detail by historians. It proved to be accurate
in just about every detail.
PO: The armour that the legionaries wore was called “lorica
segmentata,” which is thin strips of steel which were attached to a leather
base, and they are a very distinctive feature of the legionary armour. And would
have provided on one hand very good protection for the upper body, but at the
same time flexibility. The Roman soldiers’ protection below the waist - for mobility, all they had below the waist was
a sporran-like affair, which was thick strips of leather with metal plates on
it. Then they had the tunic underneath their armour.
Narrator: But in one crucial detail Harry’s description
seemed to be totally wrong. His written testimony described the soldiers as
carrying rounded boss shields. Quite unlike the traditional Roman rectangular
shields. But in fact this single detail only served to underline the veracity
of Harry’s experience.
HM: One was carrying a long, like a lance affair, and one of
the soliders I saw walking out the wall carried a shield. Now in the centre of
the shield it was like a raised bulb.
PO: Now Harry refers to round shields, and we don’t normally
associate these with legionnaires. But the Roman army also included auxiliary
troops, and these included soldiers who were recruited in frontier areas, and
from subject peoples and so forth - and their eqpt was really rather different.
And we know, for example, that they did have round or oval shields. So it may
well be, that what Harry has seen was a detachment of auxiliary troops, who were
attached to the fortress in York for some particular function. We know that at
Cawthorn, to the north-east of York, there are a number of fortifications there,
which include a couple of what we think are practice camps. So in order to keep
their hand in (so to speak), the soldiers were sent out to where to train by
building practice fortifications, rather in the way soldiers are kept busy
today. The last thing the roman authorities wanted, was soldiers sitting around
with time on their hands.
HM: The terror I felt was because I could see them exactly
as I can see anyone else now, so I thought naturally all they had to do was glance
to their right to see me in the corner - and obviously the terror was in cast
they’d do me any harm. But they didn’t, they just looked ahead of them and went
into the wall opposite. When the last one had cleared the cellar and gone
through the wall, and I couldn’t hear or see anything else, then I made my
escape out of here.
Narrator: When Harry described his remarkable experience to
the curator of the Museum at York, it turns out he was by no means alone in
having seen the legionnaires: mud bespattered, weary, returning perhaps from a
training exercise or a cross-country forced march. In a sense, it could be said
that the Roman camp in York is still active, and that seems to be true of many other Roman
sites around the country. The Roman legionnaires are still with us.
Part two
Narrator: The Romans occupied this country for over 400 years,
but they had over 25,000 men stationed here, and they imprinted themselves very
firmly on the British landscape. They brought with them their architecture and
technology; they built cities and forts, and farms and villas, linked by a
network of arrow-straight military roads to move their legions quickly to any
trouble spot. They made wine here, raised families, grew up and died here: thousands
of Romans lie buried on British soil. For a long time, Colchester, out on the
East Anglian marshes, was the Roman capital of the country. One of the roads
leading out of the city ran east to West Mersea Island, and a modern road
follows the old Roman causeway. West Mersea Island was well developed: it had farms and villas and a Roman princess.
Legend has it she was married to a centurion from Colchester, and she is buried
in a large burial mound quite close to the road. Some local people would claim
that the romans are still active on West Mersea Island. Jill Smeaton, for example,
who lives very close to the burial mound, has heard them.
Jill Smeaton: Well, in 1987 I’d been living here about 10
years, and I’d always been a little bit frightened perhaps, when I’d been out
to do the late night feeds, because we keep horses here. But after 9 or 10
years of seeing and hearing absolutely nothing I’d forgotten all about it, to be
honest with you. Then it was the night of the autumn equinox, 1987 (September
the 23rd) – very, very black night, there was no moon whatsoever. The
tide was over the strood, so we were actually cut off at that time, and it was
around 3 or 4 in the morning. I’m a very heavy sleeper and I don’t wake up for
anything, normally. Suddenly I just sat bolt upright in bed, because going past
my bedroom window (we live in a bungalow) was the sound - the very clear, definite
sound - of two horses, unshod, walking along as they were going through reeds
or long grass. Which was extraordinary, as I’d cut the grass that very day - it had been long but it was completely short. But
it was a swishing, wooshing noise. And coming behind these two horses was the
sound of a very very heavy wooden cart, the wheels just rumbling along. Not going
very fast, as you might imagine a chariot - just rumbling along. Whether it was
a funeral procession..? Perhaps it could even have been that. But it was such a
heavy wagon or whatever tey would or cart they were dragging that the walls of
the bungalow were actually reverberating, it was like being in the middle of a
w movie, just the noise of the horses and cart going past. And my friend in the
room next door heard exactly the same thing. And although she’s a much lighter sleeper
than I am (I normally sleep through anything), we both rushed out into the
hallway. And funnily enough, her husband didn’t hear anything - nothing at all
- and yet the two of us heard the most tremendous rumbling going past. We thought
our horses were out, looked out the window in a panic, and we were going to
have to rush out and herd them up. But they were just going past too slowly for
that. You couldn’t see anything, and our own horses a few hundred yards away
were completely silent.
So we then heard it move away. We looked through the windows
and couldn’t see a thing. Again it was completely black, and it seemed to move
across the road, away from the strood, and go up in the region of Dawes Lane.
Narrator: Many other people have heard similar sounds of carts
and chariots moving across the island. Others claim to have seen the centurion
husband, perhaps on his way to visit his wife’s tomb.
Alfred, local resident:
One .. night my friend and I came back from Colchester. We’d been to one
of the pubs there, and had a few drinks and saw some of our girlfriends and
that. We came back onto Mersea Island over the strood, on the East Mersea road.
And we turned into Dawes Lane about 400 yards up the road, where there was a
pond and haystacks. Misty night… in the
headlights this figure came out between the pond and the haystacks. Walking
towards the mound. And he looked like a Roman centurion. He had a helmet on
with an eagle on the front, he had a shield, a sword… umm, he had a uniform on,
and he sort of had a red skirt, but you couldn’t see his legs. And we stopped
the car and my friend said “We’ll have him tonight!” and he jumped out of the
car and I followed. We got about 400 yards in the road where theres a mound - roman
mound with an opening in it. And, um, he sort of looked at us and then he
disappeared.
Valerie, local resident: We were coming, coming along Mersea
strood one evening, about 12 o’clock. It was high tide and the full moon. And
as we were going along the strood, I was happened to look across the opposite
side of the road. And there was somebody walking along, and I looked, and it
was the Roman ghost. And I said to my husband, “oh look - there’s the Roman
ghost!” and my husband said “Don’t be so silly, what on earth are you on about?”
W turned around and came back, and we came along slowly, and I wound my window
down on my side (because I was on the near side), and had a look. And there was
this Roman - and my husband saw him as well. He was all dressed up, and holding
his two spears. And he was had all the leather sort of skirt on, and he was
sort of very upright and straight. And he was quite a large man. And he was
just looking straight ahead. He was looking - all his face was all, a rounded
face, and his eyes was just looking straight ahead. And we were further up, and
turned round, then when we turned round and came back, he’d just completely
disappeared. And the water was at high tide - it was level with the pavement. And
there was no boats, no cars, not a bicycle, nothing, and he just completely
gone.
Narrator: Sounds of course terribly inexplicable, but what
can possibly be happening in these kinds of experience? How can Roman soldiers
still be marching across the country nearly 2000 years after they left these
shores? What do the scientists have to say about it all?
David Fontana, Professor of psychology: Well that’s a major
question. When the Society for Psychical Research was set up a century ago, by
a group of very distinguished academics from Cambridge University, they thought
that they would very quickly, by scientific methods, they would find out the
reality or otherwise of phenomena of this kind. Well, a hundred years later
we’re still searching, we’re still looking. And the society, over that century,
has had many of the most brilliant scientists in the country as members. All
they been able to do is be relatively convinced that these phenomena have
happened. Far from an explanation, it ends up in the end as a matter of belief
Narrator: One explanatory theory that has some currency, is
that in some way building and rocks and the earth itself absorbs energy from the
living beings who inhabit them. And that later on, under certain conditions,
that energy - that signal - can be replayed rather like a cd or a tape. Indeed,
it’s called the stone tape theory.
Archie Roy, Professor of astronomy: You have to postulate
that in the case of a typical haunt some very emotion-laden scene or some very
important scene from the point of view of the humans that took part in it, has in
some way become registered on the environment. Not necessarily in a house, maybe
even outside. And that it looks like, it’s almost like, a sort of psychic video
that has been created. And someone who comes along who’s sensitive enough to
act as a “psychic video player” will actually play that tape and see the
figures, or perhaps even hear voices or hear sounds. And it is nothing - it is
nothing to do with the people who were originally there, who are no longer
there. It is simply a record.
Jim Lyons, Research physicist: If you imagine some sort of
environment, say some individual undergoes some drastic experience like decapitation
or something like that, then the energy liberated at that point in time is in
fact transmitted - expelled - into the surrounding material and stored in that
material. The subtle energies, a series of vibrational frequencies, can in fact
then be read out at some later time - very much like a video recording. So a
sequence of rather drastic events can in fact be recorded in living matter.
Narrator: At the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, one
eminent physicist, Brian Josephson explains an even more outlandish
possibility. That inanimate matter could actually have consciousness. In its
present state of knowledge science couldn’t deny such a proposition.
Professor Brian Josephson, Nobel Laureate in Physics: the
idea that a piece of matter could hold impressions of the past is a surprising
observation that would be very hard to explain. And the only way I could
understand it, would be if the stone or whatever it was had some kind of
consciousness, and could remember on that account. Um. Now whether it could
have consciousness or not, we don’t know. Consciousness is assumed to be always
connected with brains, but we don’t really have any kind of theory of consciousness
in science which would tell us that is should be associated entirely with brains. So if science were
ever to have a proper explanation of consciousness, or proper theory of it,
it’s always possible it might allow a wider collection of objects than just
brains to express it.
DF: My hope is that science will be able to demonstrate
these things in a reliable way in the future, and be able to provide a scientific
explanation in the future. Which is in no sense saying that they would not be
spiritual or religious or in
orientation, because the two things need not be separate in that sense.
Narrator: But clearly science is still struggling for an explanation
for things and events that it’s not really equipped to explore. Meanwhile,
there is no doubting the validity of Harry Martindale’s extreme experience, and
it is burned into his memory as vividly now, as on the day he experienced it.
HM: One of the churches here in York, they, er… put pressure…
pressure on me as a Christian. They didn’t think it was right that I should
mention my ghost story. And I went along with this for a while, but then I
think – “No! Why? Why shouldn’t I mention it?” I‘m not trying to convince you
that what I saw in here happened. I know it happened to me. Whether you believe
this or not, it doesn’t bother me whatsoever. No one has ever turned round to
me and says “You’re a liar.”
