An excerpt from the Diary of Professor Matthias Jeremiah Braithwaite; a Victorian investigator of the paranormal, on his travels around York, a city most haunted.
"Dear Diary,
At last, a sighting, but by mere happenstance rather than good grace or design.
In my younger days in Marrakesh, I chanced across a souk selling exotic and mysterious wares. The trader, Amir, caught my attention in particular - a rotund gentleman shrouded in the overpowering scent of spiced pomade. My fancy was absorbed by an ornate and unusual hand lamp, powered by clockwork and bejewelled with large vulgar glass stones. When wound the most peculiar flickering light emanated - an unnatural purple glow which stung your eyes to gaze upon. Amir spun a elaborate tale of provenance, revolving around the loss of the beautiful wife of the Sultan. Devastated by her passing, a reward was offered to devise a manner to gaze upon his young wife’s beauty one more time.
After a string of elaborate inventions from scientists, spiritualists and charlatans, a simple clock maker brought a lamp claiming that under the combined light of the full moon and the beam of the lamp, the form of spirits from another world would appear. The now aged Sultan waited, but at each full moon the sky would be blanketed by cloud, until at last he also passed. Local legend claimed the spirits wove this blanket of cloud to prevent him seeing the other side. How Amir obtained the lantern was not explained, nor why the jewels encrusted on the lamp were glass and not precious - I crushed one stone beneath my boot to prove this before the haggling began. The sum agreed was not for the faint hearted but I had become obsessed by the artefact.
One night I was compelled to test the lamp which had been gathering dust on the mantle in my York home. Going to the place called Whip-ma Whop-ma-gate - according to local folk lore, the historic scene of barbaric beatings and whippings - thinking that this might be the right location to find troubled spirits due to the heartache and turmoil that such a place might engender.
Unsure of the legitimacy of such a contraption I wound the lamp to its full and waited until the sky cleared and moonlight hit the streets below. The most curious thing imaginable; a vision in the style of a zoetrope flickered in the purple light before my very eyes. A shrouded ghost who bore the markings of “Horace” drifted into view, the vision flickering between his world and ours. “Molly” sat in a high window waiting for her Horace, completely unaware of me as he drifted towards a doorway and vanished. Their world was like ours but different - our midnight was their mid day and Horace was visiting for tea. This mundane view was not what I was expecting in such a place of turmoil. From the fragments I viewed I could see a home and Molly waiting for her man to return. There was no fanfare or hullabaloo just an ordinary couple together again."
M.J. Braithwaite
The print is presented in a black mount with outer dimensions 14x11"
The diary entry, printed on parchment effect paper, is in the reverse.
Also available in black & white and a special 'enchanted' edition.
Our favourite frame choices for this picture are distressed pastel black or small linear black. The prints are framed on demand in the gallery's workshop - if the print is in stock, we can frame it! Do contact the gallery if you need help with framing, as we stock many other frames in this size.
© The Artist
