The Ghost of Spankley Cottage
When paranormal researcher, Rosie Bumford, is called out to investigate a haunted cottage, she doesn’t expect to be the one getting busted with some incorporeal-punishment from the ghost of a very strict headmistress. It seems that mysteries are not the only things destined to be uncovered during this investigation!
from 📚 Contemporary Comeuppance
The Havershams were reticent to acknowledge that Spankley Cottage was haunted, and it was a feature the estate agent’s brochure had neglected to mention. They were a couple who valued discretion, yet the disturbances in their master bedroom had become difficult to ignore. Floorboards creaked without explanation. Objects moved by the will of unseen forces. On several occasions, Mr Haversham noticed that a stout wooden hairbrush had relocated itself from a dressing table to the night-stand.
They knew it was time to engage the help of professionals, hence Rosie Bumford’s arrival on a balmy July evening, via the 7pm from Tunbridge Wells. In a tight denim miniskirt and slouchy grey cardigan, she strode along the station platform, her ponytail bobbing. The soles of her patent leather Mary-Janes, worn over mismatched argyle socks, one red, one green, clacked as she hurried through the station concourse.
The cottage’s new owners were keen to uncover the mystery, but had been coy about the precise nature of the haunting.
“You came highly recommended by our previous investigator,” Bernard Haversham told her. “She left in rather a flustered state, unfortunately. We heard she was last seen boarding a bus to Hastings, clutching her skirt, missing a shoe, and we never quite got to the bottom of things.”
The departed investigator, Pippa Thorne, had been one of Rosie’s long-time rivals and was a well-established paranormal researcher. Coming from a competitor, the recommendation was surprising, and Rosie’s unease grew as she wondered what on earth could have spooked Pippa so much. Still, a job was a job, and she was not one to turn down an opportunity.
“Pauline... that’s to say, my wife,” Mr Haversham continued, “apologises for not being here to meet you too. Her experiences in the cottage have left her feeling rather uncomfortable. Ever since we moved in, she hasn’t been able to sit down and relax.”
There it was again. Rosie drew the distinct impression that he was holding something back.
To a casual observer, nothing about the stone-built thatched cottage suggested spooky goings-on. Somehow that only made matters worse.
A low garden wall, blooming with flowering plants, surrounded a neat lawn and colourful planted borders. A blushing-pink clematis clung to trellis, framing the front door. In the still evening air, bees hummed and butterflies danced in the golden sunlight. Everything spoke of peace and contentment, so why was Bernard so secretive? Why couldn’t Pauline sit down?
While Bernard took Rosie’s small overnight bag to the guest bedroom, she unpacked her much larger equipment bag: night-vision cameras, air temperature sensors, EMF meters, and ionization detectors. Rosie insisted she needed to be alone in the old cottage to carry out her investigations, and therefore, Mr and Mrs Haversham agreed to spend the night with friends.
It began, as these things often do... quietly. The needle of her EMF meter refused to budge, no cold-spots were detected, and the atmosphere remained uncharged. True, one of the historical portraits in the Haversham’s hallway gave her the heebie-jeebies, but she was going to require far more conclusive evidence than that.
Beside black and white photographs of the cottage in its earlier days, a portrait in oils hung in a gilded frame. A small brass plaque beside it read: “Miss Agatha Cartwright. Headmistress, Little Dithering Finishing School for Young Ladies, 1908-1926.”
She was an elegant woman, well-dressed in a tweed skirt suit, but her piercing blue eyes gazed at Rosie with uncompromising intensity.
Was there a tiny, almost imperceptible shift in that gaze as Rosie glanced away? With a shiver, she forced herself to look back again. The expression was unchanged, yet somehow Miss Cartwright seemed more knowing, as if she had gleaned an insight into this modern visitor to her former home.
As the hallway grandfather clock ticked closer to midnight, an eerie calm seeped from the very fabric of the building. The silence, combined with the lack of any indications from her equipment, began to feel oppressive. A yearning, that later proved difficult to explain, drew Rosie with a particular, inevitable certainty towards the master bedroom.
The old stairs creaked as she stepped forward, but every footstep landed a little lighter than the last. Her shoes sounded softer on the floorboards. Creaks became whispers. As she eased open the bedroom door, it almost felt as though she were walking on air.
Almost?
To her horror, Rosie realised that as she stepped across the bedroom threshold, her feet were no longer in contact with the floor. As if in a dream, she was drifting deeper into the bedroom, at least six inches above the woollen carpet. Despite kicking and squirming, her legs were unable to gain any traction in the empty air.
The only result of this ineffectual flailing was that she found herself flopped forward, arms dangling, the floor hopelessly out of reach beyond her fingertips. For one brief moment she glimpsed herself, drifting past the dressing-table mirror. The sight was surreal. An otherworldly invisible force, hoisting her up by the hips and carrying her forward, folded over, her shapely bottom upended in an ignominious supernatural levitation.
Slowly, hard to discern at first, a sepia-coloured glow began to emanate from the foot of the bed. Rosie had the sense of a light that, in just a few seconds, became an outline with form. Although Rosie floated, defying the usual pull of gravity, her head and arms became impossibly heavy. Every movement felt like dragging herself through treacle, and it was a strain to look up to focus on the ethereal presence before her.
Stern and unyielding, the figure gazed back, eyes scornful of this inconvenient interruption to her eternal rest.
“Who? Who are you?” Rosie stammered, though she already knew the answer. The translucent tweed suit, the pince-nez spectacles perched on the end of a chiselled nose, the distinguished grey hair drawn back into a severe bun. Every aspect was a dead giveaway.
“Yes, let’s begin our acquaintance with introductions,” the eloquent spirit began, eyeing Rosie up and down. Her eyes lingered with exquisite contempt upon the mismatched socks. In contrast to Rosie herself, the elastic was succumbing to gravity, and they had partly slipped down to her ankles.
“My name is Miss Cartwright and, judging by your slovenly appearance and lamentable fashion choices, you are not one of my students.”
“If I was one of your students,” Rosie retorted, “I think I’d be a bit late for class! And put me down at once. This is completely unacceptable behaviour.”
A quiver of rage ran through the spectral headmistress, rendering her even more tangible. The tweed texture of her knee-length skirt became better defined. Her face and hands gained more substance.
“How dare you,” she fumed. “If you were one of my students, you would know that I am the one who gives instructions, and that I do not tolerate impertinence.”
Despite the absurdity of her predicament, Rosie experienced a flicker of guilt. This formidable lady had been trapped for so long in another plane of existence. A staunch disciplinarian, stripped of the respect her position once commanded. All of a sudden, it was hard to meet the apparition’s grave expression.
“I’m sorry, Miss,” Rosie offered, her voice timid as she searched for a conciliatory reply. “I wouldn’t normally answer back to my betters, but you did rather catch me by surprise. I really am most dreadfully sorry.”
The figure of Miss Cartwright continued to solidify as she contemplated this response.
“If that’s true and you are sorry,” the headmistress mused, “then you will appreciate that insolence towards one’s superiors requires firm and immediate correction. There’s a traditional remedy, which proved most efficacious throughout my career, and despite the passage of time, I shall not hesitate to dispense it now.”
Rosie felt herself drifting through the air once again, only this time she was descending, drawing ever closer to the accommodating tweed-covered lap. But she was not drifting alone. From the dressing table beneath the bedroom’s bay window, a mahogany hairbrush, well-versed in matters of discipline, was floating on a bee-line to Miss Cartwright’s expectant right hand. It was almost as if the brush itself, a relic of countless past chastisements, was eager to reacquaint itself with another naughty rear.
“No! Please, Miss,” Rosie begged. “You can’t spank my backside! We don’t do this sort of thing nowadays. It’s been off the curriculum since the 1980s!”
“You seem to forget, young lady,” the headmistress said with a sigh, “that I am very much anchored in the past. Tradition is not subject to the whims of modern calendars.”
Despite years of successful ghost-hunting, nothing had prepared Rosie for the prospect of facing a thorough spanking from a strict Edwardian headmistress. Miss Cartwright’s words exuded the quiet confidence of a lady with a reputation to maintain; even from the afterlife.
Although not quite fully corporeal, the ghostly thighs offered a degree of support to Rosie, feeling cool and grounded against her hips. She still found it impossible to lift her arms and legs and was helpless to resist as a ticklish tingle shimmered across her upturned bottom.
Without any physical contact, her denim skirt and lilac-coloured cotton panties fizzled from their usual existence and re-materialised on the floor, neatly folded beneath her anxious gaze.
“How on earth did you do that?” Rosie gasped, as cool air wafted over her exposed behind. Her sense of despondent gloom was only partly mitigated by the wealth of paranormal research this humiliating encounter was providing. If this was following the pattern of previous events, Rosie wondered if Pippa had been more afraid of the ghost, or of the discipline?
Miss Cartwright possessed a certain aloof, vaporous quality, but there was nothing insubstantial about the hairbrush that had come to a weighty rest against the soft flesh of her bare bottom. She gulped, visualising this steadfast object which, no doubt, must have struck fear into the hearts of so many former pupils, but it was not Rosie’s heart that was about to be struck!
“Can’t we just talk about this, Miss?” she pleaded. “The corporal punishment era has moved on, and perhaps you should too!”
But from her undignified position, Rosie knew she possessed no leverage, either for negotiation or for escape.
“Someone has to uphold standards around here,” Miss Cartwright insisted. “And I’d prefer to stick to my tried and tested methods, if you don’t mind.”
Whether or not Rosie minded seemed almost as immaterial as the ghost itself. The broad-backed brush ascended, hovered, and then came crashing down upon her defenceless derrière!
She was a 21st century girl who had never experienced a spanking in her life. The suffocating dread now coiling around her made the situation plain. Her introduction to the pragmatic art of physical discipline might have been inexcusably delayed, but that was about to be remedied... with a vengeance!
The spirited impact of the flat wooden implement sang through her cheeks, firing up a persistent, tingling buzz. A veteran of many such proceedings, the hairbrush was an implement that commanded immediate respect.
“Miss, please!” Rosie wailed. “There’s no need for this!” But Miss Cartwright had barely started.
As Rosie floated, limp and forlorn across the uncompromising lap, the hairbrush performed its duties with purposeful precision. Deep rippling impacts shuddered through the sensitive orbs of Rosie’s curvy rear, but howls of protest went unheeded and anguished squeals of pain provoked no sympathy from this strictest of spectres.
Under the earnest guiding hand of Miss Cartwright, no less formidable in her lately translucent state, the mahogany implement performed as it had throughout its historic career. Indifferent to the countless smarting behinds it had left in its wake, it dotted from cheek-to-cheek, from bottom-to-thigh.
Rosie’s rear had never experienced a discomfort such as this. Each crisp smack penetrated deep and fast. Every time the intense pain surged, then ebbed, as the tingling heat dissipated. And yet, it never quite had the opportunity to fade altogether before being reinforced by another resounding crack of mahogany upon tender skin.
In this merciless exchange, Rosie was out of her depth, unable to squirm free of her plight, her poor posterior growing redder and redder. As the spanking reached a blistering climax, warm tears began to dribble down her nose, dripping to the vintage Axminster carpet and fading into the weave.
“Now- stand up!” Miss Cartwright commanded.
In her slumped position, Rosie hadn’t been aware that the weighty, dreamlike-grip had been released. In an awkward shuffle she wriggled to her feet, stepping back from the bed and clutching her throbbing buttocks. The sting was fierce, her frantic rubbing doing little to ease the interminable stabbing prickle that pulsed and smarted with relentless ferocity.
Miss Cartwright raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“This is the moment your predecessors have fled,” she remarked. “Yet- here you are. I get the impression that you might have something to say to me?”
Rosie’s cheeks blushed in a manner that complimented her name.
“I do. Thank you, Miss,” she began. “I will always remember this lesson, and I promise I will never be so impertinent again. Also, I’ll try my best to ensure that you won’t be disturbed in future.”
With a satisfied smile, the ghostly headmistress laid the hairbrush aside upon the nightstand. It had, once again, proved that its utility went far beyond mere hair-straightening tasks.
“In that case, I am going to help you, Miss Bumford. A message, if you like, and a compromise; one that will benefit yourself, and Mr and Mrs Haversham.”
Still squeezing and massaging her blazing sit-upon, Rosie responded with a nod. In silence, respectful and attentive, she listened to Miss Cartwright’s message.
The next morning, the Havershams cautiously re-entered the property, and they convened around the breakfast table. Following last night’s events, Rosie had adopted a cautious approach to furniture and was pleased to observe that each of the wooden dining-chairs had been fitted with soft feather cushions. She and Pauline gingerly took their seats, stifling pained winces and exchanging a knowing glance.
“This has been a most unusual case; striking and particularly memorable,” Rosie confirmed, trying not to squirm upon her seat. “But I think I’ve managed to negotiate a truce.”
Mr and Mrs Haversham breathed an audible sigh of relief.
“Miss Cartwright is a lady of very exacting standards, but she has agreed to restore domestic harmony if you abide by these specified standards. Your bed must be made every morning by 7:30, her beloved front garden is to be maintained, and the radio should play only classical music; with no Wagner after 8pm.”
Rosie left the couple mulling over the nature of their otherworldly host’s stern requirements, her own behind still warm and tingling within the confines of her restored denim skirt. The experience left a lasting impression, and it was already clear that she would be suffering the after-effects for a considerable time.
At least now she knew why Pippa had been so keen to pass this job to a professional rival. Revenge, she decided, would have to wait until she had recovered. By the time her train pulled in at Tunbridge Wells, she had decided exactly how the tables should be turned upon the mischievous Pippa. Rosie’s recent education, in regard to Edwardian traditions of a forceful and practical nature, were going to prove decisive, and would undoubtedly give her the upper-hand!
For her part, Mrs Haversham discovered a renewed zeal, born of necessity, and within weeks their cottage’s front garden was the envy of the village. Flowerbeds were weeded, lawns trimmed and edged, and the rose bushes beside the garden gate bloomed like never before.
She could sit down in comfort once again, for now at least, but when dusting the bedroom, she kept a close eye on the hairbrush. Whenever she imagined there may have been the merest twitch of the implacable grooming instrument, she rechecked the bed linen and made sure the bathroom towels were fresh and neatly folded.
With so many uncomfortable memories still fresh in her mind, Pauline felt a subconscious twinge from her posterior. She reflected that the ghost of Miss Cartwright certainly had a talent for sharpening one’s attention to detail.