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Air Date: October 29, 2022

Tacked onto the end of an otherwise ordinary manuscript by a monk around the turn of the 15th century, the Byland Abbey Ghost Stories depict spectral encounters between medieval residents of Yorkshire both from this life and the next. In most of the tales, the ghosts appear to the living as shapeshifters seeking absolution to escape from purgatory, ending with the ghosts resting in peace after a bit of dialogue with the one doing the conjuring. In this rendition of stories I, III, V, and IX, James Joyce provides superb narration accompanied by the electronic sounds of Kittie Cooper, Alex Christie, and Heather Mease.

STORY I.

Concerning a certain ghost of a certain hired servant from Rievaulx who helped a man to carry beans. A certain man was riding on his horse carrying over himself a peck of beans. His horse stumbled on the road and broke its leg. When the man noticed this he carried the beans on his own back: and while he was walking on the road he saw something like a horse standing on its hind legs, with its forelegs raised on high. The man, completely terrified, prohibited in the name of Jesus Christ the horse from harming him. With this done, the apparition walked with him as if it were a horse, and after a little while it appeared in the shape of a revolving bale of hay and there was light in the middle. To which the living man said, "God forbid that you bring evil to me." After this was said, it appeared in the shape of a man and he conjured it. Then the ghost told him his own name and both the reason and remedy, and he added, "Allow me to carry the beans and to help you.” And he did thus all the way to a river but he did not want to cross beyond it, and the living man did not know how the sack of beans again was placed over his own back. And afterwards he made sure that the ghost was absolved and that masses were sung on the ghost's behalf and the ghost was helped.

STORY III.

Concerning the spirit of Robert, son of Robert from Bolteby in Kilburn seized in the cemetery. It must be remembered that the aforementioned younger Robert had died and been buried in the cemetery, but he was accustomed to come forth from the grave in the night and disturb and frighten the peasants, and the dogs from the town were following him and they were barking greatly. At length young men from the town setting forth and coming together to the cemetery said amongst each other they would lay hold of him if only anyone could. But with his face seen, all fled except for two of whom one by name Robert Foxton seized him in egress from the cemetery and put him over the steps of the church, the other in a manly way acclaimed, “Hold him firmly, until I come to you.” To which the other responded “Go quickly to the parishioner that he may be conjured, because with God willing, what I have I will firmly hold continuously until the coming of the priest. Indeed this priest of the church hurried quickly and conjured him in the holy name of the Trinity and in virtue of Jesus Christ until the point when he responded to him to things asked. By which conjuring he was speaking in the interior organs and not with a tongue but as if in an empty doleum, and he confessed his diverse transgressions. Seeing these things, the priest absolved him but burdened the aforementioned apprehenders lest they reveal in a way his confession, and concerning the rest he rested in peace, placed by God. 

STORY V.

Likewise, what I write is marvelous to say. It is said that a certain woman seized a certain ghost and carried it into a certain house over her back in the presence of men, one of whom reports that he saw the hands of the woman plunging deeply into the flesh of the spirit, as if the flesh were rotten and not solid but imaginary. 

STORY IX. 

Likewise, about the spirit of a man from Ayton in Cleveland.  It is reported that he followed a man for eighty miles so that he would be bound to conjure him and to aid him. He who was conjured confessed that he was excommunicated for the matter of a certain six pennies but after absolution and apology having been made he rested in peace.  In all these things God shows that he is a just rewarder when nothing evil is unpunished and from the converse, when nothing good is unrewarded. It is said that the same spirit, before he was conjured, threw the living man on the other side of the fence and threw him up from the other part in his descent. He who was conjured responded: “If you would have done thus in the first place, I would not have harmed you, otherwise you were frightened in such places, and I also have done this.”

Text adopted from the Latin to English translations by the Byland Abbey Ghost Stories Project at Saint Anselm College. Read the stories and more about the project on their website.