Rectory Ghost.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7719, 23 January 1905, Page 4

Rectory Ghost.

SPIMT WHO FASTENED HIS TIE BEFORE A GLASS. For several centuries there has "been a tradition in Cheadle, a village in Cheshire, that the rectory fc haunted amT according to the Kcv. F. A. Macdonu, the present rector, weird noises have been' heard froirt time to lime lor which there is no i>ossiblo explanation, except by the admission of the supernatural, . According to the legend, which tho rector informed a representative of the "Daily Mail' - he believed to be .true, the disquieted spirit is that of the of Oodstow, who, when expelled from her nunnery near Oxford by Henry VIII., went with her nuns to Cheadle Rectory, She made many unsuccessful attempts to obtain permission to return, and a letter written by her to Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Esse-x, is still extant. Her appeals were in vain, ami in 1559 she died of a broken hear),and was buried in the chancel' of the church which she had] built three _ years previously. The rector, during his twentv-one years' incumbency, has not himself been favoured with a visitation,but members of his family and his domestics] hove heard the rustling of a silk gown and other sounds consistent with the dignity and gentleness of an abbess. Whenever the spectre has ixwn seen it hus usually been on the eve of AH Hallows' Hay. The story, however, does not rest on such slender evidence alone. During the time that the living was held by the present rector's brother, the maid of a lady visitor from London saw the apparition several times. In form it was that of a lady attired in . black, and the first occasion she saw it was wbile waiting for her mistress to comeiupstairs to bed. The door of the room was open and the light revealed a figure standing on the landing which, however, vanished on , the maht, who thought it another ser- ' .vant, opening a conversation. On another occasion, while in her mistress' bedroom, the spirit of a man in his shirt sleeves roamed into the room, and having adjusted his necktie before th-j looking-glass, re-