Glastonbury’s Best Known Mysteries: An Archeologist Receives Help From The Ghost

Both men were amazed at the wealth of information that they then received. And, as they were to discover, it was startlingly accurate.

Instant Results

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The very first session produced the solution – in Latin – to one of Glastonbury’s best-known mysteries: the location of the Edgar Chapel, a 15th century addition to the abbey that had disappeared without a trace. The spirit of a monk called Johannes Bryant, who claimed he had been born in 1497 and died in 1533, gave the chapel’s precise site, dimensions, and decor. Johannes also said that there was a door in the east wall of the chapel – a highly unusual feature.

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Bond uncovered the Edgar chapel, and the door-way, in 1908. He found that it had “azure glass” in its windows – another unusual feature – just as Johannes had said, and that its ceiling, too, matched the dead monk’s description exactly.

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Later sessions proved equally fruitful. Johannes said that “thin walls and poor foundations” characterized the later building in the abbey, which Bond in due course found to be true. Other monks referred to a crypt, which had collapsed; Bond unearthed the stairs to it and the double handrail the monks had described. The monks also provided details of the interior colors and of the altar screen in the abbey; Bond’s excavations proved that these, two, were perfectly accurate.

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A Broken Skull

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Bond’s most extraordinary find was a human skeleton with another, broken skull between its legs. The strange burial method puzzled Bond and, together with Bartlett, he asked the spirit monks if they could offer an explanation.

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One replied that the skull belonged to Eawulf, an 11th century Saxon earl, who had been killed by a Norman named Radulphus. By accident the two men had been buried in the same spot. Bond knew historical records that mentioned Radulphus, the Norman treasurer at the abbey, but he had never heard of Eanulf. After exhaustive searches he found two ancient chronicles that referred to an Eanulf and the man the monk named Eawulf were one and the same.

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Bond never completely believed that he and Bartlett had been in touch with spirits. He preferred to think that through his own subconscious he had tapped a kind of universal memory. But the fear of ridicule made him keep the reason for his phenomenal archeological success a closely guarded secret. Then, in 1918, Bond finally published the truth about how he had made his discoveries.

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The results were catastrophic. Bond’s career was ruined, his reputation destroyed. Within a few years he had been removed from his post at the abbey, while his architectural practice dwindled to nothing. The man who had proved beyond reasonable doubt that a source of knowledge could exist beyond reach of our normal senses remained an outcast from society the rest of his life.