GEMMA ROSE

Simon Entwistle, Storytelling and Samlesbury Hall

 

Simon Entwistle sits down for our meeting wearing a long black coat. He has a sculpted grey beard, swept back greying hair and an authoritative bearing. You look at him and feel immediately transported back in time and it is hard to resist picturing him in a dimly lit Victorian parlour in fog-shrouded London, in the time of Jack the Ripper. Simon is a teller of stories, ranging from medieval times to the present day.

 

Many of the tales he tells are historically verifiable, but what makes him fascinating is the spells that he weaves with his words. They immediately take you to that time and you become one of the fearful young men hiding in the priest hole or the fabled White Lady of Samlesbury Hall, whose life was blighted by the murder of her handsome, young lover.

 

To listen to Simon Entwistle makes it impossible to remain uninvolved in his stories - and you believe them too. He could tell you the moon was made of blue cheese and you would immediately start reaching for a knife and the savoury biscuits. Simon is not a psychic, nor is he a ghost hunter or a medium. As he says: “I would be a liar if I said that I have ever seen a ghost, because I haven’t, but I have come across many people who swear that they have, including my own father.”

 

As we sit in the chapel of Samlesbury Hall, Simon starts by turning the clock back to 1323 when the hall was first built. Almost immediately the Hall was fated. It has seen several acts of barbarianism: beheadings, a suicide and no fewer than four murders within the grounds. The first story Simon tells me is of the terrible treatment meted out to a young woman, Lady Dorothea Southworth, by her father and brothers.

 

The family was Catholic and her crime was falling in love with a Protestant by the name of De Houghton. When she refused to stop seeing him, her brothers followed her to her romantic rendezvous in the woods, and murdered the hapless young man in front of his lover. Simon’s eyes glisten when he relates how the woman never ate, never drank and never slept again, and died of a broken heart. Dorothea, according to many, never left the scene of this brutal crime and remains to this day wandering the grounds as the White Lady of Samlesbury Hall.

 

Just as Simon has the ability to effortlessly take you into the past, he can bring you back to the present and inject a dose of realism without breaking the spell. So what does he think ghosts are? “I personally believe that there is another life after this. I believe that a soul doesn’t need a heart; it doesn’t need air to breathe. It’s just there, and I think your soul does go to a different place [after death].” Simon does talk a lot about ghosts, he does believe that the human spirit lives on after death, but he is no crank. He doesn’t worship the devil or dance naked round bloodstained stones under a full moon; he is a religious, modest and moral man.

 

Simon’s knowledge of local Lancashire folklore is encyclopaedic. He tells his stories in Samlesbury village, Blackburn, Blackpool, Nelson and Clitheroe where intriguingly he lost his position as deputy mayor in the recent election by one vote. One of the most appealing things about Simon is his transparency and openness when he’s talking about things that others may describe as supernatural or ‘other worldly.' He and his stories, including those about Samlesbury Hall, have featured often on TV.

 

Simon welcomes the interest of TV producers with their motion detectors, ultra-sensitive microphones and night vision cameras. He is not out to convince, he tells his stories and invites other people to draw their own conclusions. He describes himself as a storyteller, not a ghost hunter.

 

Coming reluctantly back to the present, I become aware again of Simon sitting in front of me with his regal bearing, winged collar and frock coat. And I suddenly quite like the idea of wandering the grounds in a long, floaty dress. I look across at Simon, he shakes his head sadly and tells me that he has a party of 50 Chinese students coming next week and they wont be satisfied unless he wears the black trimmed top hat when he meets them. He shrugs. I suppose even the most charismatic of storytellers need the occasional prop.