Wesley’s old ghosts come out of the closet (From Gazette)

Wesley’s old ghosts come out of the closet

9:20pm Saturday 19th December 2009 in

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NEWSPAPERS have a lot to do with Wesley Downes becoming a ghosthunter.

That’s because one of the newspapers in our group featured his very first encounter with a ghost in 1946.

His first brush with the paranormal took place after Wesley had been demobbed from the RAF. He was living with his parents in Ardleigh and had cycled to Colchester to do some shopping. On his way back he saw an old school friend walking towards him in Parsons Heath.

He did not answer when Wesley called out his name and just carried on walking.

Later Wesley heard from his parents the boy had been killed in the D-Day landings and that day had been the anniversary of his death.

As a result of this story being reported in the Essex County Standard, Wesley was invited to join the local Ghost Club and later became one of its investigators.

In the 1970s a new organisation was formed, the Ghost Club Society, and Wesley was asked to be one of the investigating officers in the eastern region.

Now 85, and living in Cheshire, Wesley continues his work by writing books, the latest of which is Memories of an Essex Ghosthunter published by Countryside Books and priced £8.99.

In it he lists a number of the cases he came across in his years as a psychic investigator and below are a couple of them.

Whose eyes were they?

The Phantom Eyes on Clingoe Hill, Colchester.

Wesley recounts his own story when driving back to Clacton from Colchester in the 1950s. He and his mother-in-law saw some eyes floating across the road and some months later when Wesley told the story to his colleagues, one of them told him he had heard of a similar incident.

He went on to say that his grandfather had worked at Wivenhoe Park, the site of Essex University, and he recalled a story of an accident following a party. A horse-drawn coach had rattled down the track when it hit a herd of deer at the bottom of the hill. Although no one was hurt, several deer were killed and Wesley thought it may have been the eyes of those deer that he had seen that night.

He discovered a number of reports from the early 1900s in which people had seen ghostly deer. The appearances had faded over time to reveal just their heads and eventually their eyes.

Decorator’s mystery visitor

The Decorator’s Nightmare, Wellesley Road, Clacton.

A local man was asked to decorate a house which had been left empty for several months.

As soon as he entered the house he felt he was being watched and as he continued his work, he began to hear unexplained voices.

The next day the decorator arrived to discover his pots and brushes were left in a heap in the hallway and not stacked neatly in a back room where he had left them.

After three weeks and several other strange occurrences, the decorator returned on the final morning to clear up, however, when he got there he could not open the door. Going round the back he could not open this door either or any of the windows. Going back to the front, he was astonished to see the door wide open with all his equipment stacked in front of him. He checked the house to find all of the rooms had been swept, the windows cleaned and all the paint splashes removed.

As he left he caught a whiff of perfume and before he could shut the door it closed of its own accord.