Like yourselves, if asked whether I believe in ghosts my immediate reaction is to laugh like a drain and say, "don't be daft, ain't no such thing, just a figment of the imagination".
You can bet your boots there's always some know-all git present who says, "ah, all very well for you to sneer but there's more things in Heaven and Earth than we humans understand". As if this profound statement was his own original thought which nobody had ever said before.
Of course there's things we don't understand. Nobody knows everything. It's an impossibility. If it weren't there'd be no point in having a Brain of Britain contest cos you couldn't ask anybody anything. We'd all know the answers.
What these guys mean is that because you don't know everything you're wrong to scoff at ghosts and things that go bump in the dark. Maybe they're right but by the same token it don't make it a definite fact that there are such things as ghosts and you and me are as right in our beliefs that there ain't, as they are in their inference that there are.
A lot depends on the environment. It's dead easy to believe in ghosts if you happen to be walking through a graveyard at midnight during a thunderstorm, but you try believing in them down Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning in bright sunshine. If you find that you can then you'll believe anything and better you'd better stick to graveyards as you'll be easy meat for the lads who flog their gear down the Lane.
Like I said before, the bogeyman is purely a figment of the imagination.
I once met a bloke who got this figment arse about face. He told me that he was a ghost. It happened like this :
Many years ago, when I was living in Paddington, I was involved in amateur boxing, being endowed with bags of energy and ample muscle and only a modicum of brain power, and used to do training runs around the quiet streets of Maida Vale during the late evenings after work. One evening, about ten o'clock, I was trotting along the road by the side of the canal which runs from Maida Vale to Little Venice, doing my snorting and puffing as I slung over left jabs and right crosses, when a guy riding a bike caught me up and, slowing down to keep pace with me, hollered out "Which way to Harrow Road, mate?"
"Left over the bridge and straight down" I said "It joins Harrow Road at the bottom. Which way are you going, Edgware Road or past Royal Oak?"
"Up to Kensal Green" said he.
"Turn right when you get to Harrow Road" said I "What road do you want? I know all the roads around here."
It was dark at ten o'clock and a bit difficult to find a road if you didn't know the area, which I assumed he didn't.
"That's alright, mate. Just going to the cemetery and I can't miss that" he said.
"True" I said "It's a big place, but you ain't visiting this time of night, are you?"
He said "I'm just returning the caretakers bike I borrowed this evening."
"Oh, I see" said I "It's no business of mine but how come you went for a bike ride without any shoes on?" It was the first thing I'd noticed when he rode up to me. He was riding this bike in bare feet.
"Right" said he "It ain't no business of yours but I'll tell you anyway. I couldn't find them when I came out this evening and I've only got one pair. Must have put 'em on a shelf somewhere, I suppose. Anyway bare feet don't matter all that much and I didn't want to miss the chance of a bike ride as the keeper left his bike by the shed this evening."
"Well I don't fancy your luck walking home in bare feet" I said "Wait a minute though, how'd you get out of the cemetery if the keeper had gone home and come to that, how the hell are you going to get back in again?" The cemetery gates were about 10 feet tall.
"Well, I ain't got far to walk" he said, biking off in to the darkness. "And secondly, dead easy. I'm a ghost!"
He shot off down the hill laughing his stupid head off. I thought at the time that it was always the way, try to help out and you get the mickey taken out of you.
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A short while ago we took two of our grandsons to Kensal Green cemetery. Mainly for the reason of visiting my parents graves there but also because this cemetery is very extensive and the mausoleums and statues are very imposing and worth an afternoon of anybody's time.
Our family are confirmed graveyard joggers and the cemetery stroll is a favourite hobby of ours. We like to read the inscriptions that folk have put on their stones. Most are very touching but some are very humorous as you will remember I once wrote about*.
However, the enormous mausoleums that rich people have built to house their families are of particular interest, and we always do our best to find a broken pane of glass through which we can peer and possibly see the coffins. I suppose it's the macabre side of everybody's character coming out.
This time we were lucky. Vandals had paid their widespread visitations even to the resting place of the dead and had smashed a pane of glass in the solid iron door of one of the family vaults. When I say we were lucky, don't think I condone these activities. I don't, but facts are facts, the glass was broken and my not looking through would not have mended it again.
We couldn't see as much as all was darkness so I went back to the car to get a torch. Shining it through the broken window we saw into the interior of the resting place of the family whose vault it was.
Shelves were built around the vault, each shelf holding a coffin, all were covered with dust of the ages and the musty smell of the enclosed dead pervaded the air.
On the left side of the room a stairway led down to another chamber again lined with shelves carrying coffins. On the top coffin just by the top of the stairway stood, far away from the possible reach of anyone putting their hand through the window if the iron door - A PAIR OF SHOES.
I do not propose to conjecture how they got there. There was no possible way that someone could have opened the door and put them there. The door was thick iron and rusted solid around the hinges and lock, and had obviously not been opened since the last burial nor was there any other entrance. Dust was thick everywhere and had not been disturbed for many years.
Suddenly my mind switched back nearly fifty years and I saw a bloke biking off into the dark, laughing his head off and shouting "I'm a bloody ghost!".
Well, it's a load of rubbish ain't it? I definitely don't believe in ghosts, and as for a bare footed ghost riding a bike by the canal at Little Venice, I mean stupid, ennit?
No, figments of the imagination they are, but I'll admit to crossing my fingers whenever I say it.
* People are Funny 23 - The Oomy Goolie Bird
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