Ghosts & Gallows (33 page)

English ghost-hunter Robert Thurston Hopkins (1884-1958) examining one of the haunted Warbleton Priory skulls. Thurston Hopkins’ father at one time owned the death’s head of William Corder. (Peter Underwood Collection)

Robert James Lees, photographed in the studio of Philips and Lees at Ilfracombe sometime between 1911 and 1925. (Stephen Butt)

Ernest ‘Bill’ Dyer, whose crime of murder was revealed by the eerie dreams of his victim’s mother. (Author’s collection)

Eric Tombe (right) photographed with the young Dennis Wheatley in the years immediately following the First World War. Wheatley described Tombe as ‘a crook of the first order’ but revered his memory all his life. (Charles Beck)

The entrance to The Welcomes, photographed in 2011. (Paul Adams)

The graveyard of St Odhrain’s chapel on Iona, the last resting place of the troubled Netta Fornario. (Donald Whannel)

Harry Price (1881-1948), English ghost-hunter extraordinaire, demonstrating a séance room controlling device in the late 1920s. (Author’s collection)

Judge Ludwig Dahl and his daughter Ingeborg, the main players in the Norwegian Spiritualist murder trial. (Author’s collection)

Estelle Roberts (1899-1970), in her distinctive black cloak, gives a platform demonstration in front of a packed hall. Through her spirit guide ‘Red Cloud’, she seemingly made contact with the spirit of the murdered Mona Tinsley. (
Sunday Pictorial
)

Child-killer Frederick Nodder, hanged for the murder of Mona Tinsley in December 1937. (Author’s collection)

The front page of the
Daily Mirror
for 7 June 1937, reporting the discovery of Mona Tinsely’s body in the River Idle. (Chris Hobbs)

Doris Harrison, the victim in the ‘Body in the Cupboard’ case, and (inset) her husband Francis Harrison. (Author’s collection)

Number 11 Dagmar Gardens, Kensel Rise, where a whispering ghost revealed a brutal murder. (Paul Adams)