A Ghost Post.

On young Albert Ramsbottom’s birthday

His parents asked what he’d like most

He said “to see ’Tower of London

And gaze upon Anne Boleyn’s ghost”

~ from “Albert and the ’Eadsman”

*  *  *

I watched a video on YouTube last night in which an American medium went to the Tower of London and recorded a woman’s voice which he speculated might have been Anne Boleyn. He played it, and it said one word very clearly:

Jeffrey

Even though the narrator was himself called Jeffrey, it was still a bit creepy, you know? (In case anybody hasn’t noticed, it happens to be my name, and the last time I heard a woman’s voice say ‘Jeffrey’ it belonged to one Ms Zoe Minz of New York City. The way Ms Zoe Minz said ‘Jeffrey’ came close to making my knees tremble in precisely the same way that seeing Anne Boleyn’s ghost wouldn’t. But I’m getting a bit off the point here.)

So, the point is this: I’ve been searching for evidence of what might lie hidden beyond the surface of physical reality for most of my life, and during my late teens I subscribed to Spiritualism. I attended séances and development circles once or twice a week for a few years, but then lost interest and looked elsewhere. And now I attach little credence to the notion that the spirits of dead people hang around and communicate with us, at least for any length of time. I can’t know that I’m right, of course, but it doesn’t make sense to me because it doesn’t fit with the principle of metempsychosis which does make sense to me.

So where did the voice come from? I don’t know. I can’t accuse the medium of being a charlatan because I don’t know him, although the volume and clarity of the recording and the ‘coincidence’ of the man’s name leads to a modicum of suspicion.

But the fact is, as I’m always saying, I don’t actually know anything. My feeling is that an open mind is the only vehicle with which to approach anything for which there is evidence but no proof. And that’s why this interesting snippet will go into one of the lower draws of the filing cabinet.

Anne Boleyn

 Somebody from New York, NY