While many Cambridge students might consider the scariest thing lurking in our city to be 9am lectures or the price of a pint, back in the 1950s, Cantabrigians were being kept awake by something far more sinister than essay deadlines…

Just last year Cambridgeshire Live dubbed Abbey House the “most haunted house in Cambridge”, and, given the stories related by Varsity in 1955, this seems to be an apt description. Varsity ominously announced that “today the spectre of Abbey House has returned”; a recent occupant of the haunted wing of the house, built on the site of an old abbey, woke up “to find herself being smothered by a tray being pressed hard into her face”. Previously in this same room, a naval officer spent a night sleeping on the floor by the fire after “his bedclothes had been persistently torn off him as he slept in the bed”.

“Few of the local population would sleep in the house if you offered them a fiver”

The Society for Psychical Research had recently spent a week “night-watching” at Abbey House and, although they gathered no concrete evidence, a member remarked that there was “certainly something there”. Indeed, a second year Queens’ student recounted his recent sighting of an apparition; he admitted to Varsity that “it might have been a projection of [his] mind”, however he “think[s] it was too concrete for that”.

The 1955 Varsity writer revealed the multitude of supernatural occurrences which have tormented the residents of Abbey House over the centuries since its foundation circa 1620 following the dissolution of monasteries. The children of a Pembroke Fellow were witnesses to a range of sinister happenings during their 1904 tenancy in this haunted house. They recalled being “repeatedly nursed to sleep by the ghostly figure of a nun sitting at their bedside”.

Furthermore, they often played with a small dog which “nightly emerged from a blank wall”, matching the description of the dog belonging to the Squire of Barnwell who died in 1765. This squire was known as a “notorious eccentric of terrifying proportions” who even held “house-warming parties” around his coffin which he had built himself. Varsity notes that the children were unaware of this local legend, and quotes a current tenant in the safe wing of the house who remarked “few of the local population would sleep in the house if you offered them a fiver”.

“Cambridge has long been a hotspot for paranormal investigation and supernatural scholarship”

Cambridge has long been a hotspot for paranormal investigation and supernatural scholarship. This is primarily thanks to the work of the Society of Psychical Research, founded in 1882 by Henry Sidgwick – a name more familiar to us for brutalist architecture than the study of parapsychology – as the first president. An October 1951 Varsity article quotes a Mr Elliot O’Donnell who warns this society of the danger of supernatural investigations due to the “malignant” potential of spirits; he recounts his personal experiences such as the “weird laugh which has followed him all his life”, as well as “knockings, sounding gongs, self-opening doors, and body-less heads”. Fortunately, he notes that these hauntings are “temporary” or “at least intermittent” – perhaps akin to the “intermittent” nature of the occasionally nightmarish eight-week terms that haunt all Cambridge students.

A November 1951 article provides an in-depth overview of Cambridge’s Society of Psychical Research which scorns “rejection and credulity” as its “enemies” since there exists now “such a wealth of evidence that all but the fanatically prejudiced must accept as fact the occurrence of PSI phenomena”. The undergraduate society in Cambridge aimed to add “fresh data to this growing body of knowledge”, and so divided itself into several specialised subgroups: “hypnosis”, “séance-mediumship”, “magic”, “faith healing”, and “general PSI phenomena”.

This Varsity article invited students to participate in a “telepathy test” where they needed to use their imagination to guess a secret sequence of symbols, and then return their answers to Varsity to discover their telepathic potential. It is noted that “most good subjects do not know of their ability before being tested”. Although Varsity no longer advertises participation in its parapsychological experiments, the society is still in operation and publishes a quarterly journal.

Nevertheless, a 1997 Varsity writer condemns “paranormal paranoia” and advises readers to “Get real. Think scepticism. Consider the facts”. The article disparages the evidence accumulated for the existence of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena as “products of warped imaginations and temporary sensory deception”. As proof, he references the unclaimed 2.5m francs offered by a French laboratory for demonstrations of “paranormal powers” in “experimental conditions”; 188 mediums and mind-readers have failed their test.

At any rate, as Halloween spirits awaken and winter descends, it is perhaps advisable to sleep with one eye open and not to shrug off that eerie feeling of a figure lurking in the shadows.