14/11/2025
At 12.20am Sanders entered Pluckley church and sat down in a central pew. There was no light source inside; other than very faint starlight, the interior was in complete darkness. Five minutes later, he heard three distinct knocks, apparently below ground, under his feet. Then a few more from the bell-ringing chamber at the west end, behind him. Then some more from the north-west corner of the church.
'At other times they appeared, sounding as it seemed far from below ground, some yards east, north and south-east (the latter in the region of the Dering chapel). These knocks also seemed to come later from points varying to and from between the Dering chapel and the main door to the south-west.'
The sounds grew fainter, until at 12.40am they were ‘so low as to make it practically impossible to find their location’. Sanders then rose from his pew, walked slowly down the south aisle and into the Dering chapel, where he sat down in a chair. This was the darkest part of the church. He now tried to put himself into such a state of mind that his sight and hearing held ‘the completest sway over other sensations; a form of natural blocking or jamming of the nervous system, other than those dealing with vision and sound’. This required absolute stillness and great concentration.
Over the next 20 minutes Sanders experienced more peculiar sounds:
'… snatches of almost inaudible ‘speech’ with the syllables so blurred into each other as to make them not recognisable: these occurred every few minutes, for the duration of no more than 2½-3 seconds.'
His concentration was suddenly broken at 1am by the striking of the clock which ‘filled the church with tumultuous sound’. After this, no more knocks or voices were heard.
From 'Pluckley: the Making and Faking of a Ghost Story'
www.canterley.co.uk/pluckley-ghosts
