Michael Reeves first came to our attention as a person of psychohistorical interest in early 2003. An English Heretic researcher was investigating the possibility that a curse had been unwittingly cast upon the Suffolk village of Lavenham, during the making of Reeves’ Witchfinder General. As you may know, the village of Lavenham was featured in Reeves’ film primarily for the infamous witch burning sequence. Shortly after completion of Witchfinder General, Reeves’ mental health declined rapidly and he died in mysterious circumstances on February 11th 1969.

A chance discovery on the Internet by our researcher had led to the realisation of a sinister connection between Lavenham and the film industry. In 1969, Sharon Tate, the wife of Roman Polanski had a role in the film The 13 Chairs, a comedy horror, interior and exterior scenes of which were shot at Lavenham. In 1970, John Lennon and Yoko One filmed their experimental movie Apotheosis above the snow covered fields of Lavenham and in 1971, Pier Paolo Pasolini directed The Canterbury Tales, which used the Suffolk village as the location of medieval London .

The 13 Chairs proved to be Tate’s last film before she was brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family. In 1975 Pasolini was senselessly beaten to death by an acquaintance on the shores of Ostia, and in 1980 Mark Chapman gunned down Lennon outside the Dakota buildings in New York. Could the filming of the witch’s execution at Lavenham laid a curse upon the village? The thought would be fanciful were it not for a comment made by Ian Ogilvy – actor and friend of Michael Reeves – who starred in Witchfinder General. Describing the mood in the village following the witch-burning scene, he is quoted as saying:

                           “…There was an element of spectacle there and it was curious that the next day several inhabitants of Lavenham who had taken part in it and lived around the square, said ‘You should have heard the clanking and the crying and the screaming last night’. That we’d woken a lot of the ghosts up. And they were quite serious about this. ‘There was a terrible, awful noise of wind, screams and moans’. It was strange".

Exorcism at Lavenham .

Our first intention on discovering this connection was to film a documentary on the curse at Lavenham. However, we soon realised that such a project may invite the hex upon us and so it was proposed that we conduct an exorcism. The village, we felt would be too dangerous a location, given the malevolent and extremely violent nature of the curse and so the project lay in limbo.

Interest in Michael Reeves was reawakened when it was discovered that the film director had in fact been cremated at Ipswich Crematorium. The crematorium it must be pointed out is located a mere five minute drive from the current head office of English Heretic and is passed as a daily occurrence by members of our organisation. It was proposed that perhaps Reeves himself was attempting to achieve rapport with the organisation. Maybe it was Reeves who was crying out from beyond for help in exorcising his troubled spirit. Spurred on by this, it was decided that Ipswich Crematorium would provide the ideal location for such a cleansing rite. Our decision was confirmed by an elegiac comment made by Reeves’ biographer John B. Murray, in his book “The Remarkable Michael Reeves”. Describing the funeral of the tragic filmmaker he made the following observation:

“Michael Leith Reeves, one of the greatest natural born filmmakers England has ever produced, was cremated on 20th February 1969 at Ipswich Crematorium, in Cemetery Road, Ipswich. His ashes were strewn on the February Lawn in the Garden of Rest near the old fish Pond at the front of the green-domed Temple of Remembrance. There was no memorial stone, nor was there a memorial plaque in the Temple Of Remembrance – nothing to indicate the passing of this great artist.”

Whatever the merits of Moore’s hyperbolic and morbid lament, we felt that this provided us with the ideal opportunity to unveil our Black Plaque scheme as well the opportunity to conduct an exorcism of the curse that had been unleashed by the witch-burning.

February Lawn and Crematorium chimney, Ipswich Cemetery.

Stafur til að vekja upp draug.

So in early October and November a number of field studies were conducted at the cemetery, focusing upon the February lawn and the vicinity of the Temple of Remembrance. Samples of the ambience were collected using a digital tape recording device and these were collaged together with sounds from Witchfinder General.

We employed the services of an expert in ancient Icelandic magical staves from the museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft in Strandir. For the purposes of our operation, he suggested the recitation of an incantation that was traditionally used to accompany the drawing of a stave to wake the dead. The stave could also be used to exterminate a ghost and had the power to drive away evil spirits and would have to be carved on the skin of a horse’s head with the mixture of blood from a seal, a fox, and a man. And so based on the recommendation of our colleague in Strandir, we overlaid an audio sample of galloping horse hooves taken from Witchfinder General with the intonation of the following verse:

Þykkt blóð, þreytast rekkar. Þjóð mörg vos öld bjóða, grand heitt, gummar andast, glatast auður, firrast snauðir. Hætt grand hræðast dróttir hríð mörg, vesöld kvíða, angur vænt, ærnar skærur. Illur sveimur nú er í heimi.

A magical stave to wake the dead.

Parentalia.

Michael Reeves was found dead in his flat on Tuesday, 11th February 1969. He was cremated on the 20th February. In Roman times, between 13-21 February the public state festival of Parentalia was celebrated. The purpose of Parentalia was to honour the dead, or more accurately “for propitiating the ghosts”. During the term of the festival all temples remained shut until the final day, the feast of Feralia, when the temples were opened and gifts offered to departed ancestors.