On my solivagant pursuit on Carlton Bank this morning, the village of Carlton-in-Cleveland lay peacefully below, conjuring memories of a promise I made. Well, a sort of promise. I said I would recount the tale of another spectre that haunts this village.
You might recall my previous post, the Ghost of Madame Turner. This tale, however, concerns a Miss Prissick, who is said to roam the Manor House and churchyard of Carlton. The account of her spectral presence was documented in the Leeds Mercury on 28 March 19061‘Ghostly Visitations. | Leeds Mercury | Wednesday 28 March 1906 | British Newspaper Archive’. 2024. Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000747/19060328/175/0005> [accessed 26 March 2024].
Miss Prissick was a young woman who was sent to a convent in France for her education. There, she fell in love with a man who was not a gentleman. The man bribed her guardians to give her an opiate, and she was taken away from the convent in a coffin as if she were dead. Her family believed she was dead and mourned for her.
In 1870, the family vault was opened and Miss Prissick’s coffin was found to contain only shavings and lead. It is believed that she was murdered and her body is buried in a foreign land. Her ghost is said to revisit the scenes of her childhood.
Recently, the ghost of Miss Prissick has been seen walking from the Manor House to the church swinging her sun-bonnet in her hand.
Now consider this story by that prolific writer of local history, Hugh Cook, which appeared in the Cleveland Standard 26 years later2Cook, Hugh W. “Cleveland Re-Visited | Cleveland Standard | Saturday 17 December 1932 | British Newspaper Archive.” Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, 2022, www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003490/19321217/141/0008.. The church referred to is in Stokesley:
The Mysterious Coffin Story.
It is really remarkable the numbers of quaint legends, tales, etc., one can “rake up” in many of these old Cleveland places, and I usually leave “no stone” when I visit them, with this object.
The Church Register Books—and there are records I usually endeavour to have a glance at everywhere (and I could put some remarkable instances about them in writing also) record “Buryed thys 30th daye of August. 1739. Elyzabeth ye daur off Richarde Hornsby, master mariner.”
Records state that this person was buried under the old church porch, but on restoring the church about 1771, this coffin was unearthed, and as it was broken, it was opened, and curiously enough, contained nothing but sawdust and shavings. there being no vestige of a bone of any sort.
Whether a fraud was committed, and the body never interred—or perchance stolen—of course I cannot say. Probably the coffin mystery will for ever remain amongst the “great insolvables.”
The incident is now apparently quite forgotten, as I cannot hear of anyone in Stokesley who knows anything about it now.
Are these merely different tales with the same root? The similarities are too striking to ignore.
- 1‘Ghostly Visitations. | Leeds Mercury | Wednesday 28 March 1906 | British Newspaper Archive’. 2024. Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000747/19060328/175/0005> [accessed 26 March 2024]
- 2Cook, Hugh W. “Cleveland Re-Visited | Cleveland Standard | Saturday 17 December 1932 | British Newspaper Archive.” Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, 2022, www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003490/19321217/141/0008.
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