Most ghost stories walk familiar ground. Someone complains about a cold draft that has no source, or they glimpse a shadow moving where no person stands, or maybe a staircase groans as if carrying a hidden weight. People nod along because that’s what they expect from such tales. Dodleston messages refused to follow that script. In the 1980s, in that quiet Cheshire village, the haunting skipped the attic and the corridor. It showed up instead on a BBC Micro computer, lines of text glowing in green, as though someone from another century had discovered the keyboard.
Meadow Cottage and the Early Disturbances
Meadow Cottage looked ordinary enough when Ken Webster and his partner Debbie moved in during the autumn of 1984. It was the kind of place you might picture in a postcard, quiet evenings, steady routines, nothing remarkable at all. Yet the stillness didn’t last. Within weeks, odd disturbances began to chip away at that sense of calm.
Cans of food were discovered stacked in precarious towers. Chalk lines appeared on the walls with no explanation. They even noticed prints in the dust, shaped like feet but with six toes, not five. Anyone who knew their folklore would have thought straight away of poltergeists, those restless spirits famous for pranks and noise. For a time, that seemed the most sensible answer, but it did not hold for long.
The First Messages
Among the cottage’s possessions was a BBC Micro Model B computer, a workhorse of the 1980s. One day, Webster found new files saved in its word processor program. No one in the household had written them. Inside were lengthy passages in odd, old-fashioned English.
The writer introduced himself as “L.W.,” later switching to “Lukas.” He said he was a man of the sixteenth century, living on the same ground where Meadow Cottage now stood. His words were inconsistent, sometimes awkward, yet carried a conviction that suggested a living voice behind them.
After weeks of exchanges, the writer revealed himself as Thomas Harden. He spoke of tending his garden, of neighbors whose suspicion weighed heavily on him, and of living under the eyes of the sheriff’s men who accused him of witchcraft. His words painted a man torn between learning and faith, watching his back at every turn.
What startled the Websters most was Harden’s apparent ability to glimpse their world. He once wrote about a photograph of a Jaguar car left on a table, describing it as if it were some bizarre contraption. He commented on furnishings in the cottage, objects he could not possibly have known about if the story were nothing more than a fantasy.
A Tudor’s Glimpse of the Present
As the correspondence unfolded, Harden’s curiosity about the modern age grew. He puzzled over light without fire, over warmth in the rooms when no hearth burned, and over food kept in vessels he did not recognize. Things the Websters considered normal read like enchantments to him.
Harden’s letters showed more than fear; they showed fascination. Once he wrote about Debbie’s clothing in a way that made her seem like a stranger dropped from another world. Modern fabrics and colors appeared otherworldly to him. These descriptions gave the correspondence an almost dreamlike texture, as though the centuries were folding into one another right there in the cottage.
The Arrival of 2109
Then came a third voice. This one signed itself “2109.” It did not write in Tudor rhythms, nor in warm conversational tones. Instead, the words arrived clipped, abrupt, almost like orders.
2109 told the Websters that the strange exchange was part of an experiment. They were warned not to interfere, since the balance of events across centuries could be damaged. The notes carried an unnerving authority. Little was revealed about who or what 2109 was, only that “we are watching, we are guiding, we are correcting.”
Sometimes, 2109 broke into ongoing conversations between Harden and the Websters. The effect was jarring: a Tudor villager begging for reassurance, a modern couple struggling to respond, and a brusque presence from the future interrupting to remind everyone of the rules.
A Dialogue Across Three Centuries
By then the whole thing had shifted. It was no longer just about a ghost sending odd notes. The dialogue stretched across three fronts: a Tudor man writing in fear, a modern couple trying to keep up, and a cryptic voice from a future century that offered few answers.
It was not the sort of haunting anyone could have predicted. Instead, it became a conversation stretched across time, entangling three worlds at once.
The Vertical Plane
In 1989, Webster set down the account in a book called The Vertical Plane. It introduced readers to a haunting where old-fashioned poltergeist mischief gave way to spectral conversations through a word processor. Harden’s archaic voice, the eerie presence of 2109, and the surreal image of a ghost communicating through a computer made the book unlike anything that had come before.
The book fascinated its readers, but it did not stay in print. Over time, it slipped into obscurity. Secondhand copies became scarce. Word spread among enthusiasts, and collectors began hunting it down, speaking of it as if it were a rare prize worth chasing.
Then in 2022, a new edition appeared. The response was immediate. Podcasts devoted episodes to the Dodleston Messages. YouTube channels dramatized the text. Online forums dissected every claim. The story was reborn in an era more accustomed to the idea of digital hauntings.
Support and Skepticism
Believers pointed to Harden’s language as too convincing to be the work of an amateur. Webster consulted Peter Trinder, a local teacher with a background in English, who supported the authenticity of the phrasing. To those inclined to believe, this seemed like evidence the case was genuine.
Skeptics had plenty to say. They pointed out awkward spellings, clumsy archaisms, and phrases that sounded closer to parody than to Tudor English. A few even noticed that Harden’s sentences echoed Webster’s own style, suggesting the book might be more literary trick than paranormal breakthrough.
The Society for Psychical Research briefly considered the case but never published a full report. Without their stamp of investigation, the Dodleston Messages remained in the gray zone, unproven, but not dismissed either.
Digital Folklore and Echoes of the Present
From today’s perspective, the Dodleston case feels ahead of its time. In the 1980s, the thought of a ghost typing into a computer was almost absurd. Now, with artificial intelligence producing convincing text and myths spreading across the internet in hours, the idea does not seem quite so ridiculous.
Hauntings have always adapted to the tools of their age. Spirits once scratched on walls or knocked on tables. Later, they spoke through radios or appeared in ghost photographs. In Dodleston, they left files on a BBC Micro. In our own age, stories of digital hauntings and uncanny algorithms feel like a continuation of the same pattern.
The Mystery’s Legacy
By 1986, Webster and Debbie had left Meadow Cottage. Harden’s final message was a farewell. 2109 announced their work was complete. No more files appeared.
The lack of closure only deepened the fascination. Believers continue to see it as evidence of time-spanning communication. Skeptics continue to treat it as a hoax. And others remain in the middle, seeing it less as proof than as a powerful story about possibility, imagination, and fear.
Decades later, The Vertical Plane still refuses to fade. The Dodleston Messages endure not because anyone solved them but precisely because they remain unsolved. They remind us that hauntings change shape with the times, that the line between past and present can blur in unexpected ways, and that the strangest stories may not drift from attics or ruined halls at all, but blink into life on the screen of a machine.
References
HowStuffWorks. “Did a 16th-Century Ghost Haunt a 1980s Computer in the Dodleston Messages?” Last modified July 2021. https://science.howstuffworks.com/dodleston-messages.htm
Ruffles, Tom. Ghost Images: Cinema of the Afterlife. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004.
Society for Psychical Research. “Dodleston Messages.” Case files and reviews, 1985–1989.
Webster, Ken. The Vertical Plane. London: Grafton/HarperCollins, 1989.
The Vertical Plane, Second Edition. Norwich: Iris Publishing, 2022.
Woolley, Matthew. “The Haunted BBC Micro: Revisiting the Dodleston Messages.” Journal of Digital Folklore 12, no. 3 (2019): 44–58.
YouTube. “The Dodleston Messages Explained.” Posted by Bedtime Stories, March 2023.
