Why Do Grandfather Clocks Seem So Creepy?

October 29, 2021

The grandfather clock stopped working for absolutely no reason, again. When I noticed, I made a conscious effort not to memorize the time its hands pointed to, prophetically, no doubt.Didnt you just wind the clock? I shouted to my husband. Of course, he said, and I knew from the way he said it we were thinking the same thing. We would have to call Edward, the local clockmaker, whose disappointment neither one of us was ready to face. The grandfather clock is a classic Ridgeway. Above its face, a moon peers over two silver globes, its unblinking eyes painted to observe in a placid, detached sort of way. It belonged to my husbands grandparents, a present from his parents and aunt and uncle on their 30th anniversary. The clock lived with them in Maine. It, along with the rest of their belongings, stayed in their house after they passed away, nearly a decade apart, and in March of 2020 we took up residence for all the obvious reasons. When we arrived, my husband learned to crank the weights so that they rested high inside the barrel of the clocks glass chest. This chain-pulling is the clock winding; that the grandfather clock needs its chain pulled once a week is one of many jokes it is designed to play. In any event, the clock was not satisfied with my husbands effort, and refused to tick. Edward took the movement away and reinstalled it a few weeks later, instructing us never to touch the clocks face, and to crank the weights weekly, setting an alarm if we needed to. Never ever under any circumstances were we to move that clock not so much as an inch lest we again disturb its gentle balance and force it to withhold time. He implied that young people such as ourselves were not up to handling such a monarch of a timepiece, and we took it is as something of a challenge. I can attest to my husbands diligence. He wound the clock weekly. We tiptoed around it, lowering our voices deferentially when we drew near (he says on this point I have gone too far with my editorializing; I, however, remember whispering). Still, it stopped. Its not that grandfather clocks are delicate, they just have high standards and will intone for no less than what they were designed for, which is balance and punctual cranking. As a genre, they are profoundly accurate. As a genre, they also have quirky personalities. I cant remember how long we lived with the grandfather clocks booming before we learned to set its chime to silent (my husband thought the sound was soothing; to me, it was like living in a train station), or when it was that the clock first let out one long low, errant chime, despite still being set to silent, and I decided it was haunted. My husband staunchly disagrees. If you squint at it, the story of how these clocks got their names shows that it was on account of their eeriness, rather than their stature, as one might like to think. No squinting is required to see that, from the beginning, these clocks were perceived as animate. Sentient, and, by and large, haunted. Once upon a time, the grandfather clock was more commonly referred to as a longcase or tall-case clock, an iteration of the wags-on-the-wall pendulum whose history is traced to Galileo Galilei daydreaming in church (circa 1580s), matching the swing of a chain (supposedly the bits on a chandelier) to the rhythm of his heart. Inventors did what they did, a thought was made manifest, and eventually, an anchor escapement replaced the verge escapement so that the swing-swing of a pendulum was reduced, its power harnessed and more efficiently utilized. Put a case around it and voil. Back then, the longcase was meant for homes with high ceilings and homeowners with deep pockets. Theres a line floating around that says these clocks would have cost a years salary, but I didnt read the book from whence that stat supposedly comes; knock yourself out and let me know. Regardless, the association with status and wealth stuck around, and these heavy, tall pieces C 63 on average?C that chimed Westminster Quarters (or St. Michaels chimes or Whittington chimes) became family heirlooms. Fast forward to the mid-1800s. A man named Jenkins, its been said, got his longcase on the day of his birth. When Jenkins and his younger brother took over the George Hotel at Piercebridge, in England, they put the clock in the lobby. According to Chris Lloyd of the Northern Echo, one of the Georges most important possessions was an accurate timepiece. There is a sundial on the outside of the hotel, and in its lobby is a longcase clock made by James Thompson, of High Row, Darlington, who died in 1825. It was noted for its good timekeeping. Lloyd also writes that the hotel is technically in Cliffe, not Piercebridge. This story is circuitous. Legend has it that in 1870-something, American songwriter Henry Clay Work was staying at the George (though there may or may not be a record of him ever leaving the U.S.; well leave that to the historians), when he heard the tale of the Jenkins lobby clock, which by then sat unmoving, its hands at rest. Work learned that this treasured clock used to keep perfect time, but when Jenkins the elder died it began to lose several minutes each day, despite his brother, Jenkins the younger, winding it daily, which he must have done until he himself perished, at 90 C at which point the clock stopped, unwilling to be coerced into service ever again. Inspired, Henry Clay Work wrote a little ditty:??It was bought on the morn of the day that he was bornAnd was always his treasure and prideBut it stopped, short never to go againWhen the old man diedNinety years without slumberingHis life seconds numberingIt stopped, short never to go againWhen the old man died ?Work called the song My Grandfathers Clock. It was a sensation. You can listen to a 1908 recording of it here, performed by the Haydn Quartet.?And it kept in its place, not a frown upon its faceAnd its hands never hung by its sideBut it stopped short, never to go againWhen the old man diedIt rang and alarmed in the dead of the nightAn alarm that for years had been dumbAnd we knew that his spirit was pluming for flightThat his hour for departure had comeStill the clock kept the time with a soft and muffled chimeAs we silently stood by his sideBut it stopped short, never to go againWhen the old man died People think of them like family members, said Sebastian Laws, owner of Sutton Clocks on the Upper East Side of New York City, when I called to ask about the historical anthropomorphizing of the grandfather clock. Theyre big and imposing and theyre always on; they have to be on in order to work. They require commitment, and engagement. Laws has been a clockmaker since the 1980s, though he grew up behind his fathers workbench C his dad was the founder of Sutton Clocks C and took it over after his dad retired. When you do an online search for grandfather clock repair, New York City, Sutton Clocks comes right up. Laws has gone on record to say that his favorites are plain clocks C e.g. a Seth Thomas Regulator and Ansonia school clock.?So you like a clock with a pendulum, I confirmed over the phone. Correct, he said.?Laws does house calls. He is intimate with clocks residing all over New York. Once, he worked on Thomas Edisons grandfather clock. (Imagine what that clock saw, he said.) And he believes that all grandfather clocks have personality. Sometimes they can be grumpy or cranky, he said. I dont want to sound crazy, but these clocks have souls. Many customers have brought clocks to Laws that, although they werent working at home, had nothing at all wrong with them. They just wanted to get out of the house, Laws said. See the world. See other clocks. With their person-like bulk, audible ticking, winding needs, and tendency toward the inexplicable, the grandfather clock is primed for the projection of superstition.?The Twilight Zone homed in on this in 1963, in episode 132, "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" named for, you guessed it, Henry Clay Works mega-hit. In the episode, Sam Forstmann (played by Ed Wynn, best known as Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins, who loves to laugh) has a grandfather clock that was given to him when he was born, 76 years prior. He is obsessed with its maintenance, staying up all night to make sure the thing is wound, polished, happy. Hes living with his granddaughter and her husband as they await the birth of their first child. They are beginning to suspect that maybe Sam is taking it too far with the clock. They convince him to see a psychiatrist, who advises Sam to give the clock away, and a neighbor happily assumes responsibility. Its not one of your eight-day clocks, Sam tells the neighbor. Its special, you have to wind it every other day. Only when the neighbor goes out of town do we learn the truth: Sam has been convinced by his father and grandfather that when the clock stops ticking, hell die. Now, with the clock at the neighbors house, and no way for him to get inside to wind it (he tries breaking in, to no avail), he resigns himself to death. The clock stops ticking, and Sam, visited by his own ghost, confronts his superstition. In the end, he chooses to go on living. With the clocks death, he says, he is reborn. Each man measures his time, some with hope, some with joy, some with fear, says creator and narrator Rod Sterling, standing on set in his pristine suit. But Sam Forstmann measures his allotted time by a grandfathers clock, a unique mechanism whose pendulum swings between life and death, a very special clock that keeps a special kind of time. In The Twilight Zone. Recently, my husband and I had a houseguest who noticed that the grandfather clock wasnt working. Before I knew what was happening he had opened up its case. I was shocked, and then afraid. I didnt know what to do so I turned away, as if to give them privacy. When he stepped back, the clock was ticking again. I didnt bother to ask how hed done it. Do you have a grandfather clock? Or have you ever stayed in a home that had one, and been startled awake by its sound C apparently tolling for no particular reason? Consider this clock. Imagine its reasons for starting. Or for stopping. Its a mechanism. No more, no less. If it stops working, even though you cranked its chain, as usual, perhaps its just been nudged off balance, and is not actually holding a grudge.?Perhaps.?You have to listen to the clock, said Sebastian Laws, if you want to know whether or not it's balanced. But what youre listening for, he said, is the steady tick-pause-tock of a metronome, not the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock of a heartbeat. Genevieve Walker is a nonfiction writer who splits her time between New York City and Maine. Click?here?to read her previous HODINKEE stories, which have covered everything from a Henry-Daniel Capt pocket watch to the bedside clock in?Groundhog Day.