Part 2 of Bizarre Ghost Encounters
The Soldiers in the Cellar
An apprentice in York said Roman soldiers walked through the cellar wall, cut off at the knees. The floor he was standing on turned out to be too high.
How ratings work
Two editorial scales, set by the studio when a story is finished and checked again when it is revised. Horror is how frightening or disturbing the story is. Suspense is how much pressure it keeps you under. They are not a measure of quality, and a low number is not a warning that nothing happens. Content warnings are listed separately and say exactly what is in the story.
- Horror 1, Mild
- Unusual or eerie, little distress.
- Horror 2, Uneasy
- Persistent discomfort, limited threat.
- Horror 3, Dark
- Clear danger, disturbing ideas or moderate fear.
- Horror 4, Severe
- Sustained threat, intense imagery or strong emotional distress.
- Horror 5, Extreme
- Relentless terror, graphic implications or unusually disturbing material.
- Suspense 1, Reflective
- Driven mostly by ideas or emotion.
- Suspense 2, Slow burn
- Tension develops gradually.
- Suspense 3, Building
- Regular uncertainty and escalation.
- Suspense 4, High
- Strong pressure and frequent consequences.
- Suspense 5, Edge-of-seat
- Sustained immediate pressure or a countdown.
A teenage apprentice was alone in a cellar in York in 1953, on a ladder, cutting a hole for a pipe.
What he said he saw is an ordinary ghost story until you get to one detail about the height of the floor, and then it becomes something else.
What is on the record
The Treasurer's House stands behind York Minster, in the north of England. In 1953 a young apprentice plumber named Harry Martindale was working in its cellar. He was up a ladder, fitting pipes. He was 17 or 18.
He said he heard a note, faint, like a trumpet. He kept working. It came again. Then a horse came out of the wall.
What he described was a soldier in a plumed helmet. Behind him came a cart horse. Behind that came 9 or 10 pairs of men walking two abreast. They were armed, in rough green tunics. They carried short swords and round shields, not the oblong ones a boy who had seen a film might have drawn. They looked untidy and tired. They did not look at him. They crossed the cellar and went into the far wall.
He came off the ladder badly and got out of the cellar. By his own account he was found on the floor above in a state his employer never doubted. He told the story for the rest of his life, to anyone who asked. He never changed it and he never charged for it. He later became a police officer in the city.
The detail that matters
The figures could be seen only from the knees up. From the knee down there was nothing. They walked through the cellar as if their feet were below its floor.
The Treasurer's House is built directly over one of the main Roman roads leading north out of Roman York. The road surface lies beneath the cellar floor. A dig in that cellar found it. Its level is about 15 inches lower than the floor Martindale was standing on.
So the account has a shape that a made-up one usually does not. A boy in 1953 described soldiers cut off at the knee. The ground they would have walked on turned out, when someone dug, to be exactly that far down.
What was found when anyone looked
Not very much, and it is worth being plain about that.
Nobody else has produced a matching account from that cellar under conditions anyone could check. There is no photograph, no recording, no second witness from that afternoon. People who know Roman army kit have argued over the description. Some say the round shields and green tunics fit an auxiliary unit, or a late period, well. Others say a young man in York in 1953 could have picked up the same details from a museum case a 10-minute walk away.
The floor level is the strongest thing in the story. It is also the thing most easily learned. A cellar floor sitting above a known Roman road is not a secret. It is the sort of fact a building like that repeats to visitors.
What is left
A man who had nothing to gain told one story the same way for 50 years. The one physical detail in it lines up with the ground under the building.
That is all there is. It is not proof of anything, and it was never offered as proof. It is a teenager on a ladder, a horse coming out of a wall, and a floor that turned out to be in the wrong place.
How did this story land?
No reader ratings yet.
Checking your account…