§95

‘This true experience reads like a ghost story but there is a fey element to it. It was at some point between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve and a friend and I have been out for a drink and decided to go for a ‘ghost walk’, named as such as we were going to a place called Gibbet’s Hill, which in centuries past held the gallows in which sheep rustlers and other executed criminals were locally hung. It is a place that since childhood [I] have felt exudes a strange atmosphere. Gibbet’s Hill lies between two crossroads along a path called Douglas Lane. Douglas Lane itself is reputed to be haunted by a Grey Lady. She is said to be the spectre of a Lady Douglas, past resident of Witton Towers, in the nearby village of Witton le Wear. It is said that she was murdered, possibly by her husband and that her spirit wanders on New Year’s Eve between the villages of Witton Le Wear and Howden Le Wear. That night there was a crisp covering of snow a few inches deep and there was a bright moon, perhaps full I do not recall but it cast a purpleish-blue light upon the snow. Upon turning onto Douglas Lane a fox crossed our path. We proceeded along the lane to a ramshackle empty old house (since bought and renovated) which as children we used to run past as it was ‘Mad Mary’s house’ – Mad Mary probably wasn’t mad but she was a reclusive old woman who sometimes twitched curtains and looked out. As children we thought she was a witch. Mary (which I seem to recall might have been her real name, but I’m not positively sure) had at this time been dead for a number of years and her house had fallen into a state of disrepair. It was to our surprise as we cut behind it onto fields where there is a public right of way, to see lights on in the house. Except there wasn’t but seemed to be a trick of the strange moonlight. It was quiet and still, save for the oddly nocturnal cawing of a solitary crow roosting in a skeletonised tree on the crossroads. We mildly jumped when we were approached by a curious horse whom we hadn’t noticed. We had ‘spooked’ ourselves up for the walk and had had a few beers but the events that followed happened as described. We crossed the field to the corner where the stile at the end of a thorn or holly hedge ran. (Cannot recall now, something spiny anyway). Except the style was not there. That seemed odd, it had been there for years, so we looked along the hedge to see where it had moved too. No sign, so we retraced our steps to see if we’d made an error. Knowing something of folklore, I talked about being ‘Pixie-led’ and joked that we should turn our coats inside out to break the spell, but we both decided was too cold to even take our coats off. So I said I’d heard that whistling was another method to reputedly break the spell, but us both being fans of M.R. James also ventured that whistles can sometimes also attract the wrong attention from the other side. That did not stop me whistling however. Strangely, especially as this area is open area on the top of a hill and not really an echoey place, there was an echo of the whistling but not instantly. There was a short delay of only a second or so, but still noticeable where the whistle hung on the air and then returned, as if in mimickery rather than a bounce. So there was an odd climatic effect at play. Our steps led us back to the corner of the field – still no stile. Then suddenly there was a noise at the other end of the hedge, low down. It sounded like something charging at us breaking twigs all the while. When I remember this in my mind’s eye it is like a triple zoom camera effect that you see in some films where it appears a figure is stationary but the background rushes forward. Whatever it was that made the noise, we did not see nor did we wait to see. Without a word to each other we both scrambled over the thorn hedge and ran across fields, only stopping when we had reached a path leading back into our village. We stopped then and looking at each other were both like ‘What the ‘expletive’ was that all about?’ No idea, but whatever it was and I still remember it as being very strange, instilled in the pair of us (who were admittedly already ‘spooked up’ in a watching horror movies thrill frame of mind and having had a few drinks) a sense of sudden panic. Some days later I retraced the walk in daylight, the snow having melted so could not follow exact footsteps, but discovered at the end of the spiny hedge, the stile where it had always (not quite always) been. There was no clue as to what made the rushing, crunching noise that made us run away.’ ‘I don’t class it specifically as fairy or ghost etc. just that the ‘Pixie-led’ experience seemed to make it relevant to this census.’ ‘I do think some places are ‘thin’ and the reasons for that could vary, but although not stating a fixed belief as to the actual nature and causes, but ‘supernatural’ type experiences are real. ‘Reality’ itself being something of more questions than answers.’