the misogynist ghost of captain bound

There’s this 17th century bad seed and his name is Captain Bound. He has nothing to do with our film. Except that we shot The Wasting in Upton-upon-Severn, and in Upton, Captain Bound is the local ghost. Everybody has something to say about him in this town of deep history, where the innkeepers talk as much about who haunts them as what’s on tap. 

Pubs and ghosts - an unbeatable combo

Everywhere we went in Upton, people wanted to know if we were making a movie about the notorious Captain. Or if we’d seen any sign of him. We heard his name so much I feel like he’s one of us, and so it behooves me to write about him.  I’ll try to find something good to say, but really, Captain Thomas Bound sounds like he was most unpleasant.

Bound's boss, Cromwell. Also unpleasant.

Born in 1615, he was a Puritan (See? Unpleasant!) with Cromwell’s forces when they won the critical Battle of Upton in the English Civil War. He probably enjoyed the war, because rumour has it that Captain Bound liked to kill. Specifically, he liked to kill his wives. He had four of them, three named Mary, in that sadly unimaginative era. Two of them were murdered, but the authorities could never pin it on the captain. I’m not sure they even tried.

 In time, Captain Bound committed suicide, drowning himself. Maybe guilt caught up with him, but death didn’t let him off that easy, as he’s still seen galloping around Upton, possibly looking for another Mary. If he was looking for a Jenny, he could stop galloping, as every second person I met in Upton was called Jenny. No Marys though. Maybe Upton's parents caught on - don't call your daughter Mary. 

We were hoping that, what with all that bounding about, we’d have seen him. We shot on Rectory Road, where he lived, and where his ghost is often spotted. We shot on The Ham, the riverside meadow that’s another of his haunts.  Didn’t see him, but we did see a lot of really nice Labradors. 

No galloping ghosts here, just the marginally spectral Gray O'Brien

And then - on Friday the 13th - we shot in Old Hall, on Rectory Road, in a flat that one of the poor murdered Marys is said to haunt.  Our makeup artist Sian and I were minding our own business, sitting near the window where her ghost is sometimes seen standing, when something suddenly moved behind us. (Sidenote to Gray O’Brien: It was not a cat!) I thought Sian did it and she thought I did it, and when we compared notes, we realized neither of us did it.  But it definitely moved, and made a noise, and freaked us out. 

Did they just see Mary's ghost?

Old Hall in the monitor

And that was it. It was good enough. Really, I’m not that keen to see a ghost, especially a misogynistic one, despite my many years of writing about them. And we did have other brushes with Upton’s ghostly mythology, but I’ll save those for another post.