Many years have past since that fateful night when I made a pact with the Devil. I remember it as clearly as it had happened yesterday. I made my way to the old crossroads beyond the bridge where the hanging tree stood. It was the dead of night and my body shivered as I buried a small box in the dry earth... and waited... waited for the Devil to appear.
The skies darkened and the moon vanished behind the clouds. The wind dropped and time stood still. Out of the corner of my eye I saw phantom figures screaming from the hanging tree. Their tortured, twitching faces merged into one with their bulging eyes and purple tongues lolling helplessly from their dead mouths. The sickening sight shook me to the core but I could not avert my eyes from their ghoulish features. My hands clasped my ears but their piercing screams deafened the silence. Over and over again they screamed and died and I prayed for them to stop.
Without warning the screams stopped and the condemned men and women vanished as quickly as they appeared.
A pungent stench hit my nostrils as a long black shadow covered my body.
"You prayed to me, my follower?" a voice rasped behind me.
My body was rooted to the spot as the voice appeared in front of me. I could barely open my eyes for fear, but when I did I saw the most grotesque creature that ever walked the earth. The smell of putrid flesh pervaded my senses and I feared I would pass out.
"Answer me!" the voice demanded
"Yes I summoned you." I replied.
"And what is it that you want Captain Moonlight?" the voice sneered.
"I want to make a deal........" I whispered, "I want to sell my soul in return for eternal youth and immortality."
"Do you now, and how many years do you wish to live before I come to claim your soul?"
"I don't know" I stammered.
The Devil handed me a scroll and a pen dripping in what looked like blood.
"Sign!" he ordered
I scratched my name onto the paper and handed it back.
"Your soul is now my property and I shall come for you when I'm ready, one day when you least expect it. You may have one score years or you may have ten score years. You made a poor deal Moonlight and you better make the most of it. But, for now you have your youth and strength and freedom. Treasure it, for it will pass."
The Devil slipped the scroll inside his cloak and as I looked skyward I saw a black steed galloping towards us from behind the clouds. It screeched to a halt, nostrils flaring and saliva dripping from its mouth. It was twice the size of normal horse and its eyes glowed red. In a swift move the skeletal figure mounted the steed and galloped skyward.
The deal was done. I was immortal.
As I turned towards my horse I could hear a faint laughing sound from the hanging tree. "You shall regret it," the voices cackled, "you shall regret it."
I did not look back. I knew they were right, but what the hell - I was 23 years old, and I could never grown old and no mortal could kill me. The adventure begins. TBC
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Monday, 27 July 2009
Who is Captain Moonlight & where did he come from?
Captain Moonlight is the infamous highwayman who sold his soul to the devil in return for eternal youth. His story was uncovered by the master of the Paranormal, Tom Slemen and the true story is told below.
We know how he manages to live and thrive in the 21st century, but why is he involved with Freshfields Animal Rescue and why does he choose to support the Rescue. All will be revealed in the next post. The Captain will relate the true story of how he actually sold his soul to the devil and how he happened upon Freshfields Animal Rescue. Watch this space........
In the beginning.....
Aintree derives its name from the Anglo-Saxon “an-treow” – meaning “one tree” and that one tree was an ancient sprawling oak, sacred to the Druids and the Lily-White Boys cult of nature worshippers. This once heavily forested area is unusually flat, and when the trees of the great forest were cleared away, it became prime land for racing horses and pioneering aeroplane flights. In Elizabethan times, majestic horse races were held at Aintree, and of course, the place is synonymous today with the world-famous Grand National, but let us go back to the 1760s, when highwaymen such as Tom Barrow, Captain Moonlight, and Gentleman Higgins terrorised the good folk of Lancashire and Cheshire. Captain Moonlight was an unidentified highwayman, given his nickname by superstitious locals who believed him to be working in league with the Devil, as he always managed to avoid the law by apparently vanishing into thin air during the chase. Tom Barrow, a rather effeminate-looking scoundrel, was said to have been captured at Maghull, where a bounty-hunter discovered Barrow to be a Lord's beautiful daughter in disguise. Gentleman Higgins was a highwayman by night and a respectable member of the landed gentry by day, but someone finally put two and two together and Higgins ended up on the gallows in 1767 before a ring of well-to-do female spectators who wanted to see the handsome rogue die. The odd one amongst these bandits of the road was Captain Moonlight, who was, without a doubt, involved in Occultism. He was at large across Lancashire from Hunt’s Cross to Aintree, and was active over an impossibly long time-span, unless, of course, someone else took on his mantle when he retired.
One night on Tithe Barn Lane at Melling Captain Moonlight held up a coach carrying a corrupt local magistrate and three of a local farmer’s daughters who were forced regularly to be his mistresses. With two flintlocks trained on the magistrate and driver, Moonlight ordered the Justice of the Peace to strip naked, and he complied. The mysterious highwayman took his share of jewellery and items of value from the magistrate, and said the word “Meadows”. The judge trembled and returned a shocked look, as if the uttered word meant something. “I know your little secret,’ said Moonlight, “and so shall everyone else unless you cease bothering these girls.”
He then instructed the driver to take the farmer’s daughters home, leaving the judge naked in the road. Moonlight then rode off into the night, and the meaning of “Meadows” has never been unravelled. Some wondered if the judge had murdered an old landowner of that name years before, but no one really knows. Armed posses of men scoured Lancashire and beyond to capture Captain Moonlight, but he seemed to enjoy his cat and mouse games with his pursuers and would always vanish into the night. One foggy night he put a scarecrow on a horse and the posse chased it as far as Kirkby before they realised they’d been duped. Almost a hundred years later, the people of Wavertree, West Derby and Old Swan were terrorised by a masked, cloaked man in a tricorn, who was believed by the superstitious to be Captain Moonlight. Some asserted that he could be nothing more than an impostor, but the older folks who had seen him as children were convinced it was Moonlight, and that he’d returned from Hell to indulge in his demonic pastime again. Women on their way to church were allegedly outraged, and every blaze in the districts were Moonlight was said to be at large was accredited to him.
Who was Captain Moonlight? Well, when I delved into the many adventures of this sinister yet fair highwayman, a certain name came up again and again with a curious regularity, but no one would have suspected this person because he was a man of the cloth, but I cannot prove he is the Highwayman from Hell. How can I explain his abnormally long life, which easily surpassed a hundred years? Such longevity with that type of agility is impossible, unless he struck a deal with someone who trades in souls.
© Tom Slemen 2007. From Haunted Liverpool 14
We know how he manages to live and thrive in the 21st century, but why is he involved with Freshfields Animal Rescue and why does he choose to support the Rescue. All will be revealed in the next post. The Captain will relate the true story of how he actually sold his soul to the devil and how he happened upon Freshfields Animal Rescue. Watch this space........
In the beginning.....
Aintree derives its name from the Anglo-Saxon “an-treow” – meaning “one tree” and that one tree was an ancient sprawling oak, sacred to the Druids and the Lily-White Boys cult of nature worshippers. This once heavily forested area is unusually flat, and when the trees of the great forest were cleared away, it became prime land for racing horses and pioneering aeroplane flights. In Elizabethan times, majestic horse races were held at Aintree, and of course, the place is synonymous today with the world-famous Grand National, but let us go back to the 1760s, when highwaymen such as Tom Barrow, Captain Moonlight, and Gentleman Higgins terrorised the good folk of Lancashire and Cheshire. Captain Moonlight was an unidentified highwayman, given his nickname by superstitious locals who believed him to be working in league with the Devil, as he always managed to avoid the law by apparently vanishing into thin air during the chase. Tom Barrow, a rather effeminate-looking scoundrel, was said to have been captured at Maghull, where a bounty-hunter discovered Barrow to be a Lord's beautiful daughter in disguise. Gentleman Higgins was a highwayman by night and a respectable member of the landed gentry by day, but someone finally put two and two together and Higgins ended up on the gallows in 1767 before a ring of well-to-do female spectators who wanted to see the handsome rogue die. The odd one amongst these bandits of the road was Captain Moonlight, who was, without a doubt, involved in Occultism. He was at large across Lancashire from Hunt’s Cross to Aintree, and was active over an impossibly long time-span, unless, of course, someone else took on his mantle when he retired.
One night on Tithe Barn Lane at Melling Captain Moonlight held up a coach carrying a corrupt local magistrate and three of a local farmer’s daughters who were forced regularly to be his mistresses. With two flintlocks trained on the magistrate and driver, Moonlight ordered the Justice of the Peace to strip naked, and he complied. The mysterious highwayman took his share of jewellery and items of value from the magistrate, and said the word “Meadows”. The judge trembled and returned a shocked look, as if the uttered word meant something. “I know your little secret,’ said Moonlight, “and so shall everyone else unless you cease bothering these girls.”
He then instructed the driver to take the farmer’s daughters home, leaving the judge naked in the road. Moonlight then rode off into the night, and the meaning of “Meadows” has never been unravelled. Some wondered if the judge had murdered an old landowner of that name years before, but no one really knows. Armed posses of men scoured Lancashire and beyond to capture Captain Moonlight, but he seemed to enjoy his cat and mouse games with his pursuers and would always vanish into the night. One foggy night he put a scarecrow on a horse and the posse chased it as far as Kirkby before they realised they’d been duped. Almost a hundred years later, the people of Wavertree, West Derby and Old Swan were terrorised by a masked, cloaked man in a tricorn, who was believed by the superstitious to be Captain Moonlight. Some asserted that he could be nothing more than an impostor, but the older folks who had seen him as children were convinced it was Moonlight, and that he’d returned from Hell to indulge in his demonic pastime again. Women on their way to church were allegedly outraged, and every blaze in the districts were Moonlight was said to be at large was accredited to him.
Who was Captain Moonlight? Well, when I delved into the many adventures of this sinister yet fair highwayman, a certain name came up again and again with a curious regularity, but no one would have suspected this person because he was a man of the cloth, but I cannot prove he is the Highwayman from Hell. How can I explain his abnormally long life, which easily surpassed a hundred years? Such longevity with that type of agility is impossible, unless he struck a deal with someone who trades in souls.
© Tom Slemen 2007. From Haunted Liverpool 14
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