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August 8, 1979 - North Shore News

our mysterious world

rs by George Cunningham-Tee

with a ghost —

In 1971, when the young English psychic Matthew | Manning was still a teenager, he carried on a correspondence with Robert Webbe, the builder and former occupant of the house where the Manning family lived.

Nothing particularly remarkable about that you might say — except that Robert Webbe hadn't lived there since 1733! |

The ‘correspondence’ was carried on for about a year

by means of automatic writing, that is, through Matthew's hand, although

the ghostly. landlord in- dicated his presence in other ways. He would ‘take’ things from the Manning family and make exchanges by replacing them with old objects such as an 18th century book (given to them page by page over a period of six months), a small loaf which was as hard as con- crete and must have been about seventy years old, and old beeswax’ candle and other items. These things ‘just arrived’ and no one ever saw them materialize.

.f It was obvious from the remarks made in this written dialogue with Matthew that Robert still considered the house to be his and that consequently anything in it was his also.

We enter into a real, or unreal, ‘twilight zone’ situation with the Manning- Webbe case, a zone where third and fourth dimensions appear to occupy the same space and where time is an

amalgam of past = and present.

An extract from Mat- thew's records of these conversations on Paper an idea of this overlapping time-space situation.

Writes Matthew, wThe ye. | fc taccing abate TTT. 4 typical. | shows” ~his~

TNEW.YORKIUPD _ -(Webbe's) complete inability” NEW.--¥ )

to understand life as 1 know it, or lo grasp any matter outside his own en- vironment. Everything 1 wrote had to be explained in terms that he could perhaps follow. He had no knowledge of cars so | described them as horseless carriages,

“When | explained this to him, he replied (on paper)...

“T have never heard of the like of such nonsense for a jong time. All carriages must have a horse or they stand sul.”

And when Matthew 1n- formed him that... "We can fly to France in twenty minutes”, Robert retorted, “This cannot be truc. Birds are the only creatures to fly

and it takes some three days to cross to France. I cannot believe such ridicule and nonsense.”

SCHOOL PROJECT

This strange relationship between the two men of such disparate time periods began after Matthew had been working on a school project, researching and compiling a

history of the Webbe family

-of the village of Linton,

Cambridgeshire, where the

Manning family lived. '“My presence in the house,” wrote Matthew,

“Once occupied for nearly 300 years by successive generations of Webbes, seemed to bring about the appearance of a certain Robert Webbe as soon as I began to write out the notes

7] bad made on his family.

Over a period of about one year he wrote, through my hand, nearly fifty pages of foolscap, reporting his everyday life during the early years of the 18th

century.”

To show his appreciation

for the research Matthew

had done, (“Your work was most fine and in most part very right”) Webbe promised to supply Matthew with ‘half a thousand’ names to help fill in the gaps of the history.

True to his promise, over a period of several days in 1971, the signatures and dates of some 503 different people appeared on the walls of Matthew's bedroom in Queen: House. The dates ranged com 1355 to 1870 and many of the signatures could be authenticated by town records

Richard Nixon California for the East. as planned, where will the former president go now that he’s had to cancel his purchase of a $750,000 penthouse in Manhattan? It could be Connecticut.

leaves

Nixon and his wife, Pat, expressing a wish to move to New York in order to be near their daughters and grandchildren, contracted last month to purchase the expensive cooperative duplex apartment in Manhattan's fashionable upper East Side

But some residents tn the lo-storey building at 19 E. 72nd St., were against the move

The wall writing appeared while the room was empty, with doors and windows securely locked. |

Robert Webbe probably —

died from a disease of the legs... in the correspondence he~was always complaining about his maladies.

“He still thinks that he is.

alive. and that he owns_the house — he is not sure why we live in it,” wrote Mat- thew. “There is a _ par- ticylarly dogmatic streak in his character and although I tried to make him un- derstand that it was now 1972, he fervently believed it be 1727 and nothing would alter his belief.”

Young Manning finally aliowed their incredible relationship to end. ve

“After about = twelve months, he became so impetuous, ‘unintelligible and erratic in his statements that I devoted my energies to more constructive ends”... but Mr. Webbe was still around and even when Matthew was preparing the material for his book The Link, he was watching and ready with a disapproving comment.

A message was found scrawled on the kitchen cupboard door... “I see you write fun of me and mock me. I see you write of me.”

Robert Webbe was so convinced of his own existence that he didn't need to ‘borrow’ Matthew's hand anymore!

(c) 1979 Toronto Sun

Syndicate

Nixon may move

wasn't politics. It was just thal they feared the presence

of Nixon might altract reporters and = curiosity seekers to the building and require security guards

On Thursday the head of the cooperative’s board sent letters to the residents saying that Nixon had cancelled the contract ‘to purchase the apartment.

The Nixons have a variety of options. There are many other luxurious apartments in Manhattan. Failing that, there are numerous suburban towns within casy commuting distance from New York.

Earlicr this weck, if was reported that Nixon had said he might move to Con- necticul,

. _t lee Si

aa waft | . i i |

FOR ABOUT A YEAR, George Webbe wrote nearly 50 pages of foolscap through the hand of Matthew Manning.

(reassape Aev7ay D9

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