The Ash Manor ghost: the old man in green at Ash Green, Surrey

Ash Manor stands on Ash Green Road, near Guildford in Surrey. A moated, timber-framed manor house, its origins thought to be 13th-century. On 24 June 1934 a new household moved in. Nandor Fodor, who later wrote the case up, called the couple Mr. and Mrs. Keel. A 16-year-old daughter and servants came too. Soon there was stamping in the attic. The attic had no floorboards.

18 November 1934. About 3:35 a.m. Mr. Keel woke to "three heavy bangs" on the bedroom door. They returned each night at the same hour. Two bangs. Then one. On 25 November, back from a trip, Mr. Keel heard a single violent bang. Then something stood in the doorway: "a little oldish man, dressed in a green smock, very muddy breeches and gaiters, a slouch hat on his head and a handkerchief around his neck." It looked solid. Mr. Keel grabbed for its shoulder. The hand passed straight through, and Mr. Keel fainted.

Mrs. Keel saw it too. "A red kerchief around his neck and a pudding basin hat upon his head." A red face. Eyes "malevolent and horrid." A mouth open and dribbling. A retainer named Miller saw it as well. All described "a little man with mud-covered leggings and with a ghastly throat wound." It walked across the bedroom to a cupboard that had been the priest's hole. It vanished when touched. The family dog sensed it.

In 1935 two lay exorcists failed. A priest's formal exorcism made things worse. Two more declared the house stood on a Druid circle. In January 1936 an amateur photographer caught a "cocoon like shape" on the landing at midnight. In July 1936 Fodor arrived. Three nights in the haunted room. Flash photographs. Nothing.

25 July 1936. Eileen J. Garrett came with Dr. Elmer Lindsay. Garrett's control, Uvani, spoke first: "Don't you realize that you yourself vivify this memory?" Then another voice, in an apparent medieval English accent. Charles Edward Henley. Robbed of lands by the Earl of Huntingdon, betrayed by Buckingham, locked up in Ash Manor House "and eventually murdered" four hundred years ago. Fodor and Lindsay reasoned with the ghost. It reluctantly agreed to leave.

At a second sitting, away from the house, Uvani said the Keels were using "this poor, unhappy creature" to embarrass each other. Mrs. Keel then confided to Fodor that Mr. Keel was homosexual. Fodor read the ghost as a way for the couple to avoid open conflict. Mr. Keel admitted to "hanging on to the ghost." After that, it was not seen or heard again.

Fodor did not close the door entirely. The independent sightings and the dog's behaviour stayed unexplained. "It may be that those who put themselves in an unguarded psychological position, in a place filled with historical memories and traditions, do, on rare occasions, come into contact with a force or an intelligence other than their own." Research into Charles Edward's claims proved inconclusive. No historical person was identified.

The story reached print in 1936, in True Ghost Stories and in Light. Fodor told it in full in The Haunted Mind in 1959. A cracked lantern slide labelled "Ash Manor Ghost" survives in the Garrett collection at UMBC. The case sits beside Fodor's Gef the Talking Mongoose and the Thornton Heath poltergeist, in the era of Borley Rectory.