The Society for the Investigation of Spectral Phenomena
The Scratching in the Cellar of Surrey Street
Dog & Bull, old inn, Broad Green, London
I.Background & History
The Dog & Bull is a public house in Surrey Street, Croydon, in what is now south London. It is a Grade II listed building of the eighteenth century, with a nineteenth-century frontage, and stands upon the site of an earlier inn called The Bell, which is believed to date from the twelfth or thirteenth century.
The cellars of such a house are therefore far older than the brickwork above them. Whatever the street has laid down over the centuries lies beneath the present floor, and the Society notes that the inn has kept trade without interruption on the same ground for the better part of seven hundred years.
Source: Dog & Bull, Wikipedia
II.The Entity
Old Knuckles
A narrow, stooped figure that is seen only from the waist upward, as though rising out of the floor of the tap-room. The fingers of both hands are worn to blunt, split stumps, and the nails are gone. Each time it is seen the figure stands a little higher out of the boards than before.
Assessment of Peril
Class IV: Malignant
The entity takes notice of anyone who hears it and answers their knocking in kind. Of those who have knocked back, none is recorded as having lived out the year in their right mind.
III.The Account
The Society received the following in the hand of a Mr. Josiah Crake, formerly a licensed victualler of Croydon, on the eve of his death in the winter of 1911. It reached our offices too late for any remedy, and is set down as he wrote it, with the clerk's corrections only.
'In the autumn of 1887 I kept the Dog & Bull, and I was in debt to a market dealer named Amos Venn, a lean, quiet man who lodged with me and who held my note for a sum I could not pay. He fell into a fit one night in my cellar, among the barrels. I thought him dead. I will say that plainly, for I have said it to myself for twenty-four years: I thought him dead. He had no breath that I could find, and his flesh was cold with the cellar cold.'
'I did not call the surgeon. I knew what would be asked, and I knew what the note was worth to me dead. With a pick I lifted three flags at the foot of the old wall, where the floor is older than the house, and I laid him in the earth and set the flags back and sanded them. I told the street he had gone to Brighton. Three nights later I heard it for the first time: a dry, patient scratching, from under the flags, as of a man working at a door with his fingers. I told myself it was rats.'
IV.Recorded Manifestations
- ✦A slow, dry scratching beneath the floor of the tap-room, loudest between two and four in the morning.
- ✦Knocking answered in kind: three knocks from a living hand bring three from below.
- ✦Boards beneath the old stool near the cellar stair that feel warm and yielding to the foot.
- ✦Sand or fine grit found each morning on the tap-room floor, though no sand is kept in the house.
- ✦A smell of wet earth and cold stone rising in the cellar steps without cause.
- ✦Dogs refuse to cross the tap-room and lie whining at the threshold.
Testimony of Witnesses
“'Hark at it, lads, there's a fellow down there wants his supper.' I knocked, and it knocked back. I shall not do it twice.”
“'I laid my stethoscope upon the boards as a sceptic and heard distinctly a slow movement of hands upon stone. I have attended the dying forty years and know the sound of one who wishes to be out.'”
“'I saw a man to the waist standing in the floor by the old stool, with his back to me. He was a good deal higher than he was in the spring. I gave notice that evening.'”
V.Rite of Expulsion
Difficulty: Perilous
Requisites
- ☐A new iron spade never before used in the soil
- ☐A bowl of clean water from a running stream
- ☐Three tallow candles
- ☐A loaf of bread, uncut
- ☐A length of white linen, unhemmed
The Rite
- I.1. Enter the cellar at the hour before dawn, in silence, with all other persons removed from the house.
- II.2. Set the three candles at the foot of the oldest wall and light them in order from left to right.
- III.3. Do not knock, and do not answer any knocking, however plainly it is made.
- IV.4. Lift the three flags nearest the wall with the iron spade and lay them aside without turning them over.
- V.5. Whatever is found there must be laid in the linen, and given Christian burial in consecrated ground with the bread set upon the breast.
- VI.6. Pour the stream water into the empty hollow, and replace the flags before the candles have burned to the half.
Caution. The Society's Mr. Ellery Thorne answered the knocking in 1921, believing the rite begun. He was discovered in the cellar at first light, kneeling, with his hands pressed to the floor and the ends of his fingers worn raw. He has not spoken since.
VI.Hauntings of the Surrounding District
Select a bar to filter the register.
The Spread Eagle Theatre · Old Theatre · a few paces
The Prompter's Rap, poltergeist. A knocking from the flies cues players who are not on the bill, and those who answer the cue are not seen to leave the stage.
Croydon Minster · Church · 0.2 miles
The Pale Almoner, white lady. A woman in grey linen presses coins into the palms of sleeping worshippers, and the coins are always cold and always dated from the year the sleeper will die.
Fairfield Halls · Manor House · 0.3 miles
The Archbishop's Muffled Train, phantom procession. A line of mounted retainers passes silently across the forecourt by night, and the horses leave no mark but each rider carries a lantern that gives no light.
Ashcroft Theatre · Old Theatre · 0.3 miles
The Stage-Door Hare, spectral animal. A white hare crouches in the wings before a death in the company, and it is seen to have a human eye.
St Andrew's · Church · 0.3 miles
Mr. Vane the Bellfounder, spectre. A stooped man is seen testing the note of the tower with a hammer at dusk, and the bell he strikes tolls a name afterwards found in the register.
Warehouse Theatre · Old Theatre · 0.4 miles
The Costumier's Lamp, will-o'-the-wisp. A small yellow flame drifts between the stacked flats at night and leads the lost towards the one trapdoor that has no floor beneath it.
St Mary's Church · Church · 0.5 miles
The Sexton's Boy, revenant. A thin child is found sitting on newly dug graves at twilight, and he is heard to count the mourners as they leave, always one more than came.
Nestlé Tower · Old Tower · 0.2 miles
The Hum at the Stair-Head, unclassified entity. A low note sounds from the upper floors on windless nights, and those who follow it to the topmost landing are found sitting with their mouths open, unable to remember their own names.
