Ghostly children from Lost Hearts Source

1. Rewrite remembered events as 'fictional' stories

Some of it was written up as ghost stories. So that later recollection could be explained away as "Ah yes, that ghost story by MR James..."

One technique seems to have been to take eyewitness accounts and local memories and re-write them as ghost stories or folklore. Three examples:

1. 1889 Walter Rye's account of Cromer church's ghostly rising baby:

2. Cromer Ghost Baby version 1

3. Cromer Ghost Baby version 2

4. Montagu Rhodes James' Lost Hearts from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Bloodsucked ghost children from MR James' Lost Hearts. Source

Which was set - appropriately enough - at Aswarby Hall, Sleaford, Lincolnshire.

Source: Lost Hearts, 1973 TV production

1. Havelock the Dane. Grimsby's founding tale involves children being given to rich people, two having their throats slit and one being set adrift on the sea.

   Folklore about the Ghostly Hunt may be another example of this technique.

2. Rewrite frequent events as one-off events

• Cannibalistic preying on travellers becomes a single story of the Seaney Bean family
• English butchery becomes a single Sweeny Todd story
• Memories of giants become a single person, like Anne Hardy buried in Rippingale churchyard in 1815. And here.

3. Rewrite large-scale events as smaller-scale events

• Town-sized mimic and mystery plays become small-scale mimic plays performed on a small stages called 'scaffolds'.
• Large-scale sale of human body parts is reduced to "sales of relics to pilgrims".

4. Rewrite events occurring in England as events occurring abroad:

• Cannibalism portrayed as a far-distant 'tribal' phenomenon
• Problematic institutions portrayed as a foreign problem. A reference to this 'medieval' fast-food chain.
• Wars 'moved' abroad. Where Troy Once Stood.
• Founding tales of towns and cities moved abroad. Possible examples:
  • Thong Caistor, Lincolnshire -> Carthage, Tunisia
  • Grimsby, Lincolnshire -> Rome, Italy.

5. Re-date events further back in the past (by mistake or on purpose)

There's so much evidence for this. One easy read that suggests this happened accidentally

• George Cornewall Lewis - questioned the dating of Roman empire
• Anatoly Fomenko - found evidence ancient history was fabricated by repeating recent history and changing names and locations
• Isaac Newton - questioned

This technique leaves a recognisable fingerprint. Over-used, the technique leaves fingerprints that are hard to erase.

6. Fictitious people

• Bede
• Hereward the Wake
• William Dodd
• Many of the personalities mentioned on this page

7. Forge documents

• Make up documents
• Orm the Preacher's Ormulum:

  The manuscript has been well known to linguists and language historians ever since the 17th century but its source has never been established

• Robert Manning's Handling Synne

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