Assistant to a Ghost Hunter

“Want to come and release a ghost?” asked Margo Williams. Most days that’s what she did. She pulled on anorak, grabbed bag stuffed with wads of paper, pencils, sharpener and a thermos. Off out in search of the unlucky dead trapped in a haunting.
Photo images of Nick Hammond and Margo Williams
Margo Williams and assistant Nick Hammond. Right: Margo Williams at work

The Ghost on the Staircase

I followed Margo into a haunted house. Watched while she went to work.

She smiled, friendly warm and comforting to the distressed householder and her family, disturbed by a cold and frightening shadowed figure in the house; most often seen on the staircase.

Margo sat on a step halfway up the stairs; hushed everyone so she could listen, poised ready with sharpened pencil and a clutch of half page size scraps of paper. Moments later, the pencil flew across the paper forming weird lines of joined-up writing.

Photo image of Dictation from a ghost. Sample of Margo Wiliams' automatic writing.
Dictation from a ghost. Sample of Margo Wiliams' automatic writing.

What Just Happened on the Staircase?

Five minutes or so later, the writing stopped. Margo collated the sheets of paper into sequence and read aloud the deciphered dictated message to the owner of the house. First an introduction, a name.

Followed by an apology from a man who built the house a hundred years before. He spoke of regret for the frights and inconvenience caused by his continued presence in the building.

The former owner expressed frustration at the circumstances of his haunting. The burden of a troubled conscience poured out, repeated cruelty to members of his household, long gone and forgotten by the living. He seemed to assume that was the cause of his curious incarceration.

The message concluded with his astonished description of the sudden appearance of lights, and distant voices calling to him. Then he was gone.

Where Do Ghosts Go To?

The pirate novel I planned to write, could wait. This was more important.

I tried to understand what just happened on the staircase. Found no sensible explanation, because ghosts don't exist, so I assumed. Science is adamant there is no proof of their existence. Religious influencers say everyone's asleep awaiting a distant Resurrection Day.

A month later I contacted the householder and asked if there was any difference in her home? All quiet, no shadowed figure on the stairs.

He hadn't come back. Her imagination? No, the whole family expressed different fears of the same dark glowering man-sized presence in the house.

Most Haunted island

In What Universe Do Ghosts Exist?

That was how Margo worked. Humble, caring and discreet. She had lots of Thank You letters from satisfied customers. Nothing theatrical in what she did, only a smiling warm-hearted down-to-earth attitude.

Loved dancing and didn't charge a fee for her services, only the cost of her bus-fare in getting to the site. Margo didn't drive.

Some days she rescued lonely ghosts stuck out in the wild, on lonely paths through woods; edge of a field, even a beach. Sometimes they were attached to pieces of their poignant past. Buried treasures, unexpected anchors in the afterlife.

Photo image of Appuldurcombe House, Wroxall. Isle of Wight.
Appuldurcombe House, Wroxall. Isle of Wight.

There are Different Kinds of Ghost

I spent the next 17 years helping Margo Williams work. Accepted the challenge of researching archives and records whenever names were spoken and records might reveal identity. Old houses kept the best records of their residents.

Explored what science had to say about the supernatural, only to discover its findings about the hidden workings behind the world we see.

Astonished how its gaps are more revealing than its certainties. And started to wonder if our world is more supernatural than we realise.

To Cut a Long Journey Short

I now am certain the ghost body is real. We each have a separable hidden core that identifies as our personality. It survives our flesh and blood self, and generally is extracted into another space-time environment soon after that physical body is flat-lined and beyond resuscitation, via what many describe as a 'Tunnel of Light'.

It carries a recording function, like an aircraft 'black-box'; memories and experiences stored in its body. Information which can be accessed later for review. Quite literally data processing. Why? No one knows.

A big question for me remains: Is this Tunnel of Light technically what science identifies as a wormhole?

Perfectly Possible for Ghosts to Exist

Science calculates that wormholes connect between different Black Hole space times. Other dimensions to you and me. Don't believe me? Go read the science of Black Holes and wormholes.

And the marmite (either love it or hate it) theory of multiverse with every conceivable possibility of existence. If everything is possible, anything is possible.

If our universe is mostly invisible - according to some theories as much as 90% - one among gazillions of others out there; which include unknown quantities of Black Holes, some of which are big enough to swallow whole galaxies into whatever space time exists in their interior.

Insisting there is no such thing as ghosts seems very premature.

Photo image of ghost-script identifier for Robert Young, Ship Surgeon on board HMS Ardent. Evidence exhibit presented by Walter Williams to the conference of PSI Energetic Phenomena.
Ghost-script identifier for Ship Surgeon Robert Young from HMS Ardent. Evidence exhibit presented by Walter Williams to the conference of PSI Energetic Phenomena.

Proof of Life Walter Williams at the PSI Conference

During the 1970s and 80s Margo Williams and her scientist husband Walter found the best documented evidence to prove the existence of ghosts. Presented their findings to a collection of scientists who agreed it was positive proof of personality survival.

Alas it did not end well for Walter. As a child he walked barefoot to school, but it wasn't poverty that kept him from the high spires of university achievement. It was the war. Reserved occupation for his special interest expertise - genius - in chemical compounds for munitions.

Unfairly treated following his data-based presentation on the subject of post-death personality survival. He believed in learned men, until dismayed by their betrayal and polite smear by highlighting his lack of academic qualifications to be a scientist. Walter experienced the final straw. He exploded in rage in every way and instantly passed into another space-time dimension.

I arrived into Margo's world about six months after.

The Sweet Finale Hallucination Problem

Other people have been more lucky than Walter.

In support of the ghost body's existence I found interesting confirmation in the many descriptions by NDE near-death-experiencers resuscitated in hospital ICU units. Survivors report watching their resuscitation from an unexpected second-person position – sometimes stood among the defibrillator-wielding medical staff gathered anxious around their body.

Exploring the haunted Isle of Wight

Ghost in the House

Some of us are not resuscitated. The film “Ghost” with Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg well presents the problem. Exit tunnel is not open for long.

This is to become a ghost, but unlike Patrick Swayze freedom of movement is more constrained. Why, how and by whom such boundaries are set remains a mystery.

What happened in the staircase exchange I witnessed between the living and the dead, seemed to again trigger open the 'tunnel of light' portal.

It seemed to me a good idea to make notes on what Margo Williams did, who she helped and where. She noted their last words before the departed, departed.

What they had to say about their own experience of life and death is a call to mindfulness, especially of the gap that exists between dimensions. Funny, touching, hopeful, angry comments from ordinary and extraordinary folk.

You and me.

Context and Conclusions of a Ghost Hunter's Assistant

By way of context my contribution to Margo Williams' work is presentation, that you may decide for yourself.

Where possible I identified the dead; their stories and settings; and added in some myths and legends; and a rustic grasp of science. Any faults and inaccuracies are entirely my doing, not Margo's.

Margo now is out there somewhere in a wholly different dimension; physically gone from this world. But her work is important. Not least for its implications for the living. So I keep this lantern bright. To share this information in our beautiful community.

There is more good than bad in our world, and the bad has unexpected consequences.

Ghost happens.

Its Not the Packaging that Gets Recycled

And so does reincarnation. We are recycled.

The world we leave to our children is the world we leave to ourselves.

More important than the Hereafter is the here-and-now. Be kind to others, unkindness has an invisible penalty.

Thank you for your company on this short tour of life and death mysteries and haunting. If you would like to know more about Margo Williams' investigations and other matters of life and death, read this book. Now available from Amazon.

Image of click link to book Ghost Encounters Famous and Forgotten
Book now available from Amazon