The Wynyard Ghost Story

The Wynyard Ghost Story By Jessie Adelaide Middleton © 2007 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com

Of all much—talked—of ghost stories, the Wynyard ghost story is one of the most authentic. The chief actors in it were officers in the British Army, one of whom, Sir John Sherbrooke, was Governor of Canada from July 1816 to July 1818. It is often referred to as one of the most indisputable ghost tales on record, though the various versions of it differ slightly in detail. I will first tell the story as it was repeated in the current gossip of the year 1803, being re-told by Miss Frances Wil1iams Wynn in her very entertaining Diaries of a Lady of Quality. Miss Wynn heard the story while staying on a visit at Blithfield, the seat of Lord Bagot in Staffordshire, from the lips of her host, Lord Bagot, and adds that it is very curious from its uncommon authenticity. One can imagine (the conversation having, we are told, happening to turn on ghost stories) the way in which the fashionable house-party at Blithfield was thrilled by the relation of the Wynyard ghost story; but Lord Bagot’s version was quite incorrect, as I will point out later. As he related it to Miss Wynn and his other guests it was to the following effect— During the American War, when the 33rd (Wellington’s) Regiment was quartered in Canada, three officers were dining together at the mess—Major Wynyard, Colonel Clinton, and General Ludlow, who afterwards married Lady Matilda West. There were two doors in the room, one of which led to a staircase, and the other to a small cupboard without door or windows or egress of any kind. Suddenly, without any warning, the door leading to the staircase opened and a figure came in at the door. General Ludlow was the only one whose head was turned in that direction. Aloud he said— “Good God, Harry! What can have brought you here?” The figure said nothing, but waved its hand, and, hearing General Ludlow’s exclamation, Major Wynyard turned round and, to his amazement, saw that the visitor was his brother, who was then miles away in England on sick leave. The figure walked once round the table and then through the cupboard, and then through the cupboard door, pulling it after him, but not fastening it. Major Wynyard at once got up and followed, opening the door, but the figure had vanished. Colonel Clinton, who had also seen the figure but had never met Mr. Henry Wynyard during his lifetime, was less horrified than the others, and suggested that the day and hour should be put on record. This was done. The next mails from home brought news of Mr. Henry Wynyard’s death, which took place two days after the one on which he had appeared to his brother and the two other officers, but at exactly the same hour. There is still a sequel to the story. Some years after the occurrence, Colonel Clinton and General Ludlow were walking together in London when Colonel Clinton exclaimed, “There is the figure which we saw in America.” General Ludlow turned round and saw a man (whose name Lord Bagot had forgotten) so famous for being so like Mr. H. Wynyard that he was perpetually mistaken for him. This man had never been in America.

All these facts were told to Lord Bagot, he said, by Colonel Wynyard in the presence of either one or both of the gentlemen who were with him at the time that this extraordinary adventure occurred. Lord Bagot may, of course, have heard the story from Colonel Wynyard’s own lips, but even so he did not retell it accurately. In the first place there was no General Ludlow in the room, nor was there a Colonel Clinton. The other spectator of the ghost was Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, who was the first to see and draw attention to the apparition. How the other two names crept into the story, at the time that Lord Bagot related it, I cannot imagine, as in no other version—and they are legion—do these names occur, though “Colonel Clinton” might have meant Colonel Gore, who, though not present, as I will show, when the ghost actually appeared, was in the room immediately afterwards. When I first came across the story in Miss Wynne’s delightful, gossipy book, I resolved to track it further, and, having found that Sir John Sherbrooke was one of the chief persons concerned in the mystery, I looked him up in the Dictionary of National Biography, and read as follows— “On June 23, 1784, he became Captain in the 33rd foot, then stationed in Nova Scotia. The incident known as the Wynyard Ghost occurred while Sherbrooke was quartered in Cape Breton, in 1784-5. He and Lieutenant Wynyard saw, or supposed themselves to see, a figure pass through the room in which they were sitting, and Wynyard recognized it as his brother who (as he afterwards learned) died in England at that time. A singular feature of the case was that it was Slierbrooke, not Wynyard, that first saw and called attention to the figure.” I next consulted several other authorities, and succeeded in elucidating the story which is certainly one of the most authentic on record. In the Memoir of Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, J.C.B., by A. Patchett Martin, 1893, occurs the following passage— “No account of Sir John Sherbrooke could be complete without a reference to the famous story of the Wynyard apparition. It occurred at Sydney, Cape Breton, when Captain Sherbrooke, as he then was, was stationed for a while with the 33rd Regiment, before his memorable achievement in covering the retreat of the Duke of York in Flanders. “One evening Captain Sherbrooke and Lieutenant (afterwards General) Wynyard were seated in the latter’s room, which had two doors, the one opening into an outer passage, the other into the bedroom. These were the only means of ingress or egress, so that any one passing into the bedroom must have remained there, unless he returned through the sitting-room. “The story goes that Sherbrooke suddenly perceived, standing by the passage door, a tall youth of about twenty, pale and wan, to whom he called his companion’s attention. “ ‘I have heard,’ said Sherbrooke, ‘of a man becoming pale as death, but I never saw a living face assume the appearance of a corpse, except Wynyard’s at that moment.’ “While they were gazing, the figure, which had turned upon Wynyard a glance of sorrowful affection, glided into the bedroom. Wynyard, seizing his friend’s arm, said, in a whisper, ‘Great heaven! My brother!’ ‘Your brother?’ replied Slierbrooke. ‘What do you mean. There must be some deception. Let us follow.’

“They darted into the adjoining room, only to find it empty. Another young officer, Ralph Gore, coming in at this moment, proceeded to join in the search. It was he who suggested that a note should be made of the day and hour of the apparition. “The mail brought no letters from England for Wynyard, but there was one for Sherbrooke, which he hastily opened, and then beckoned Wynyard away. When he returned, alone, to the mess-room, he said in a low voice to the man next to him, ‘Wynyard’s brother is dead!’ The first line in the letter had run: ‘Dear John, Break to your friend, Wynyard, the death of his favourite brother.’ He had died at the very moment when the apparition appeared in his brother’s room. “The sequel of the story affords a strange corroboration. Walking in London, some years after this event, Sir John, on passing a gentleman in Piccadilly, suddenly stopped, with an exclamation: ‘Sir, I have met you before!’ when, perceiving that he was the exact counterpart of the apparition, Sir John explained and apologized for his mistake. The gentleman replied, ‘I am not at all astonished, for when we used to be together I was always taken for the twin brother of the ghost!’ “ In Earl Stanhope’s interesting Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington occurs the following characteristic commendatory on this famous ghost story— “The conversation after dinner turned upon Sir John Sherbrooke, and the strange tale of an apparition seen by him and Wynyard when these officers were sitting together after dinner at Cape Breton. The Duke said that the time alleged for the story was when harddrinking was very much the fashion amongst officers, and that, in his opinion, all that the two gentlemen did see was another bottle of rum or whisky. Somebody present remarked that this was changing it from a story of ghosts into one of spirits! The Duke, for once in a way, libelled his old comrade, who was exceptionally abstemious. Moreover, it is only fair to the lovers of the supernatural to add that Sir John Sherbrooke, who was certainly anything but a man of weak intellect or given to easy credulity, steadfastly believed to the last in the reality of the manifestation which made such a profound impression upon him that he was averse to discussing it, and would never, I have heard Lord Sherbrooke say, allude to it in a light or casual way.” This ends the account given by Mr. Patchett Martin in the Memoir of Lord Sherbrooke. With regard to the pedigree of Captain Wynyard and his brother, they were the sons of General William Wynyard, who died in 1789, and was the father of five sons, all of whom were in the service. Their names were George (who saw the ghost), Henry, John Otway, William, and Ambrose Lily. The next step in verification, though of course of much earlier date than the Sherbrooke Memoir, comes from the well-known author, Dr. Herbert Mayo, who, in his Letters on the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, says— “A late General Wynyard and the late General Sir John Sherbrooke, when young men, were serving in Canada. One day—it was daylight—Mr. Wynyard and Mr. Sherbrooke both saw pass through the room where’ they sat a figure, which Mr. Wynyard recognized as a brother then far away. “One of the two walked to the door and looked out upon the landing-place, but the stranger was not there, and the servant, who was on the stairs, had seen nobody pass out. In time, news arrived that Mr. Wynyard’s brother had died about the time of the visit of the apparition.

“I have had opportunities of inquiring of two men, relations of this General Wynyard, upon what evidence the above story rests. They told me they had each heard it from his own mouth. “More recently a gentleman, whose accuracy of recollection exceeds that of most people, has told me that he had heard the late Sir John Sherbrooke, the other party in the ghost story, tell it in much the same way at the dinner-table. “One does not feel satisfied that the complicated coincidences in this tale admit of being referred to chance. The odds are enormous against two persons—young men in perfect health, neither of whom before or after this event experienced a sensorial illusion—being the subjects at the same moment of one, their common and only one, which concurred in point of time with an event that it foreshadowed, unless there were some real connection between the event and the double apparition. And we feel a nascent inclination to inquire whether—in case such instances as the present occasionally recur and instances like the two before narrated become, when looked for, startlingly multiplied—there exists any known mental or physical principle by the help of which they may be explained into natural phenomena. “The more we look into facts of the above nature, the more urgent becomes the want of such a means of explanation.” Further on, in a summary of his evidence, Mr. Mayo adds— “I shall assume it to be proved . . . that the mind or soul of one human being can be brought, in the natural course of things, and under physiological laws hereafter to be determined, into immediate relation with the mind of another living person. “If this principle be admitted, it is adequate to explain all the puzzling phenomena of real ghosts and of true dreams.” *** This is decidedly interesting, as showing Dr. Mayo’s belief in the unfathomed Laws of Nature—from the point of view of a clever and famous medical man. “Although slightly acquainted with members of both the Sherbrooke and Wynyard families,” writes a correspondent of Notes and Queries, September 4, 1858, “I have been warned that the mention of the ghost was unpleasant to either, and have therefore never alluded to it. As I have heard the tale related by professionally ‘knowing ones,’ Sherbrooke and Wynyard had no third person with them when the ghost of Wynyard’s brother passed, and certainly were not at mess. “The party afterwards addressed in London, by Sherbrooke, was described as bearing a wonderful resemblance to the dead Wynyard.” Finally, all doubt as to the authenticity of the story is swept away, and strong light is thrown upon the matter by a writer signing himself “Eric” in Notes and Queries of July 2, 1859. Writing, apropos of the Wynyard ghost story, he says— “On October 23, 1823, a party of distinguished ‘big-wigs’ were dining with the late Chief Justice Sewell, at his house on the Esplanade in Quebec, when the story in question became a subject of conversation. Among the guests was Sir John Harvey, AdjutantGeneral of the Forces in Canada, who stated that there had been in the garrison an officer who knew all the circumstances and who would probably not object to answer a few queries about them. Sir John immediately wrote five queries, leaving a space opposite to

each one for an answer, and sent them to Colonel Gore, who, if my memory serves me rightly, was at the head of either the Ordnance or the Royal Engineer Department. “The following is a copy of both the queries and the answers which were returned to Sir John before he and the other guests had left the Chief Justice’s house— “Do me the favour to answer the following— “(1) Were you with the 33rd Regiment when Captain Wynyard and Sherbrooke believed that they saw the apparition of the brother of the former officer pass through the room in which they were sitting? “(2) Were you not one of the first persons who entered the room and assisted in the search for the ghost? “(3) Were you not the person who made a memorandum in writing of the circumstances by which the singular fact of the death of Wynyard’s brother, at or about the same time, when the apparition was seen was established? “(4) With the exception of Sir J. Sherbrooke, do you not consider yourself almost the only surviving evidence of this extraordinary occurrence? “(5) When, where and in what kind of building did it take place? “(Signed) J. HARVEY. “Thursday morning, “October 23, 1823. Answers “(1) Yes, I was. It occurred at Sydney, in the Island of Cape Breton, in the latter end of 1785 or 6, between eight and nine in the evening. We were then blocked up by the ice, and had no communication with any other part of the world. “(2) Yes. The ghost passed them as they were sitting before the fire at coffee and went into G. Wynyard’s bed-closet, the window of which was putted (sic) down. “(3) I did not make any memorandum in writing myself, but I suggested it next day to Sherbrooke, and he made the memorandum. I remember the date, and on June 6 our first letters from England brought the account of Henry Wynyard’s death on the very night they saw his apparition. “(4) I believe all are dead, except Colonel Yorke, who then commanded the regiment, and is Deputy Lieut. of the Tower, and I believe Jones Panton, then an ensign in the regiment. “(5) It was in the new barracks at Sydney, built the preceding summer, one of the first erections in the settlement. “Sherbrooke had never seen Henry Wynyard alive, but soon after returning to England the following year, when walking in Bond Street with William Wynyard, late D. A. General, and just after telling him the story of the ghost (he) exclaimed, ‘My God!’ and pointed out a person—a gentleman—as (being) exactly like the apparition in person and dress. This gentleman was so like H. Wynyard as often to be spoken to for him, and affected to dress like him. I think his name was Hayman. “I have heard William Wynyard mention the above circumstance, and declare that he then believed the story of the ghost.

“(Signed) R. G. “The above is taken from a copy made from the original queries and answers, and given to me only a few weeks after the date affixed to the queries, and to it is added, in the handwriting of ‘the copyist, the following— “ ‘A true copy from the original. The queries are written in black ink in the handwriting of Sir John Harvey, Dept. Adjt. General of British America and signed by him. The answers are all in red ink, written and signed by Colonel Gore. Sir J. Sherbrooke was lately Governor of Lower Canada. It is said that Sir J. Sherbrooke could not bear to hear the subject spoken of.’ “The copyist was a near relative of the Chief Justice, and died in 1882. He was one of my most intimate friends.” *** It will be seen that “Eric’s” account (though, of course, the earlier one) agrees in practically every particular with that given in the Memoir, where Colonel Gore and his part in the affair is also mentioned. All this indisputable testimony places the Wynyard ghost story in its right position as an absolutely true incident.