Having said, only yesterday, that affable despot Jason is in the process of hibernating for the duration of the winter, I caught him outside his house " Ty Wynne" on Chapel Street in a pair of shorts during a break in the clouds.
I had just bumped into Mrs Trellis ( who thoughtfully invited the Prof and I around next Sunday morning for " good coffee and croissants") when I spied him and we fell into conversation about devil clowns running amok all over the country.
" There is a strangeness about this road at night" he added finally, when all clown talk was over
" sometimes you feel as though you are being watched"
A shiver went down my spine.
Now Jason lives on one of the oldest roads in the village. Although surrounded by houses and cottages, there are only two dwellings on the street, his house and Chapel house, both homes separated by the chapel which used to be the indoor market way back in 1700. Chapel street runs down the side of the village Hall.
When I was researching the history of the market Hall, I heard a strange story from Graham, the local handyman and Shepherd.
I quote from my sister blog Trelawnyd: Voices From The Past of his experience
In the early 1970s Ty Wynne featured in a somewhat creepy tale. Local small holder Graham Jones was just leaving the memorial hall one wintry and rainy night.. He had been playing snooker and as he got on his bicycle he saw a figure of a man standing in the gateway of Ty Wynne.Before I told Jason the story, he added to his, that he had often " quickened his step" when walking towards home at night because of the eerie feel of the place, something that was compounded one day when his daughter Eve went to play with a girl, whose house backed onto the road.
The man was wearing an old fashioned long coat and hat, and seemed to acknowledge Graham before he cycled for home.
Literally a minute later Graham approached his home along London road and was astonished and frightened to see the same man standing alone outside his own gate!
Graham wisely stopped and returned for the morale support from his friends back in the hall and by the time he returned mob handed the "man" had vanished"
Both girls ran back home crying. They had been frightened by a strange man standing behind the memorial hall.
He was wearing a long old fashioned coat!
(cue the spooky music)
ReplyDeleteThose are chilling words "there is a strangeness about this road at night".
ReplyDeleteCould be the pot holes.
DeleteHehe, that's funny!!
DeleteIt's odd- I live in a house that's very old for US standards and yet, have never felt haunted here. Ever.
ReplyDeleteBut we have a little shack on a barrier island which is not old at all and I KNOW WITHOUT DOUBT that there is a poltergeist there. I've seen its mischief many times.
I remember you posting about it!
DeleteWhat a fascinating post and a deliciously bone-chilling story.
ReplyDeleteI would never have believed in ghosts or spirits if I hadn't had a few first-hand experiences. I'm a believer...
Do tell
Delete"He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
ReplyDeleteLately he's been overheard in Mayfair
Better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
I'd like to meet his tailor"
Warren Zevon
Take a walk on the moors, John......
His hair was perfect.
DeleteInteresting.
ReplyDeleteIt's 4 in the morning and I can't sleep. The wind and rain are lashing it outside, and all I need now is a roaring fire, a glass of something, your story to be half a book long and the knowledge that I don't have to get up in a few hours.
ReplyDeleteYikes!
ReplyDeleteMy daughter's last house, which was built in the early 1900's, had a ghost. I knew it the first time I walked through the place. He (I'm quite sure it was a male) hung out around the ceiling of the stairwell on the second floor. We used to smell fresh cigarette smoke in the kids' rooms upstairs. No one in the family was a smoker. My daughter felt his presence too--especially when she was taking a shower. A pervy ghost? (haha) When my grandson had his first birthday, I was taking photos of him in his highchair with my digital camera in the kitchen. When I went to look at them, there was a bright streak of light across them, like something was trying to "photo bomb" the picture. I never had any other problem with that camera either before or since. When I was staying overnight one weekend with the grandkids while their parents were away to a wedding, someone sat on the edge of the bed when I was in it. I was so tired from taking care of two little ones that I said, in my mind, "Okay, I know you're there. Could you just leave me alone so I can sleep?" And he did. One day, much later, I came over to my daughter's and the place felt different. I asked her if she was feeling the same thing. She said she'd been praying that the ghost would leave, and I guess he did. We never smelled the smoke or felt his presence again.
ReplyDeleteI love stories like this
DeleteThanks! If you like that one, I also have one about our "ghost dog" who showed up every night for a year. And my daughter seemed to be a ghost magnet, there are several more about her too.
DeleteGo on do tell x
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteWe had become friends with one of the “kids,” now in his late 70s, who’d grown up in the house and we nonchalantly inquired if the family had a little dog at any time in the past. He said no, they hadn’t.
DeleteThen it dawned on us that when we moved we’d brought along Lolita’s old dog bed. Why, I can’t say. And then we realized that we’d stuck it in the dining room which was serving as a catch-all until we could get everything sorted out after the move. That’s where the activity seemed to be emanating from.
So we took the dog bed and put it upstairs in the dormitory room. It wasn’t long before we would hear ghost dog come clicking down the stairs on her nightly run. She also was heard rustling in the wastebasket next to the desk upstairs while my husband was working there.
I took to sleeping with a little flashlight I called my “ghost buster.” Whenever the activity started, I would take the flashlight from the table next to the bed and scan the room on the off chance I’d finally see something. All it did was stop the activity—for a bit. Some nights I would hear her drop what sounded like one of our other dogs’ Nylabone chew toys on the hardwood floor. When I lit up the room, there was nothing there.
Other nights, Lolita (by this time we figured it had to be her) would bonk around under the bed like she used to do when she slept in her dog bed under our bed back in California. We would even hear her tripping over the extension cord on the floor. Sometimes Rudy and Pepe would look up after hearing her, but they never growled or seemed disturbed by any of it.
This went on for almost a year until the terrible day that Pepe was bitten by a rattlesnake and died hours later on my bed. We were grief stricken.
Maybe a week or so later, we heard two little dogs running around upstairs, like they were chasing each other. There was more rustling in the trash and just double the activity in general.
Then, the noises gradually subsided and finally stopped altogether.
I’d had a dream (or visitation?) from Pepe the morning after he died. He used to wake me up by standing on my chest and licking my face. That’s what I awoke to—or dreamt I was waking to. He was backlit by white light and I was crying, I was so happy to see him.
Then he faded away and I realized I was awake and he was gone.
But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he hung around with Lolita for a while before they both went off to doggie heaven together. Maybe…
Bloody, bloody hell.......
DeleteOops. My apologies if I made it too long and you had to delete it. Didn't intend for that to happen. Mea culpa.
DeleteHow wonderful.
DeleteWooooooo! How will you top this when the 31st arrives?
ReplyDeleteAnother great story from you!
ReplyDelete*goose pimples*
ReplyDeleteThe power of words. 'There is a strangeness about this road at night' gives more shivers than anything a John Carpenter film can splatter our way.
ReplyDeleteGlad I read this in daylight...........spooky
ReplyDeleteOh and forgot to say thanks as my followers now up to 397, what power you have over your readers!!
DeleteWelcome! I only need 31 now!
DeleteYou write a good creepy tale. When I saw a huge pair of hobnail boots jumping around my bedroom one childhood night my Mum told me that a giant of a man called 'boots' had died in my room.......
ReplyDeleteI have not seen a ghost but may have heard one. I was in the kitchen at my mother's house some years ago. My father had died 5/6 years before and there was a loud man's voice in the adjoining room ( small rooms, door open) No radio on in there…in fact no radio in there…it said aaargh, aaargh, aaargh, very loudly and then no more. My very elderly mother was sitting quietly in another room when I rushed in to check! It was scary.
ReplyDeleteps. I also once saw a bright light in the sky. It was late afternoon in October and the sky was grey all over…I was walking the dog, facing more or less due south. In the greyness of the sky a round, full moon sized light appeared, a bit like a flash of a camera. I was waiting for a noise to follow, as it was near to 5th Nov, but only silence.I scurried home feeling a bit concerned. I searched the internet but found no one who had seen anything like it.
ReplyDeleteA chilling tale John. I have my own ghost story I post every Halloween.
ReplyDeleteThe Stranglers had a record called: "In The Shadows." The lyrics would be appropiate for this post John.
ReplyDeleteI have seen a ghost and hear ghostly sounds like hob nailed boots around the farm. Our family have been here over 200 years. So I am not surprised we get ghostly visitors from time to time.
An early Halloween motif here! Then again, maybe there's just a creepy man in a long coat prowling around.
ReplyDeleteFor thirty years?
DeleteWhat does "Ty Wynne" mean? I am guessing "The Miser's Hovel". Long ago on a dark November night, as a full moon danced between openings in a windswept sky, I saw a ghost at the cinema - "Casper the Friendly Ghost".
ReplyDeleteTy is house in Welsh
DeleteWynne was the surname of the founder of the village .he built the hall and auntie Glad's house which was a school!
That was very creepy.
ReplyDeleteI used to manage a video shop that was built on the site of an old church or chapel and there was definitely a ghost in there. I saw it several times when cashing up at night. Just a black shape that used to move from one of the bays and round into the bathroom and many mornings I went in to find video cases scattered across the floor in the same bay.
I remember my mum telling me of the time she was driving home from Swavesey one night in terrible weather. She suddenly saw an old man walking in the road and couldn't avoid him.
ReplyDeleteShaken, she went back but found no sign of anyone.
A few days later she told the old fella who owned the garage in Swavesey about what had happened. He said "Oh, that was old Mr [I forget the name] - he was killed walking on that road in those very conditions years ago."
But but but ... Let's spare a thought for ghosts themselves, John, and how THEY must feel. I myself have been taken for a ghost several times in my life. So I know what I am talking about. Dark does do funny things to some people's imagination.
ReplyDeleteU
A story that causes me goose pimples, very scary for my weak nerves!
ReplyDeleteLove these stories...wish there was more!
ReplyDeleteI think we narrow our world when we try to confine ourselves to scientific explanations of the world.... I'm not "a believer" but I wouldn't dismiss people's experiences
ReplyDeleteCreeeeepy!
ReplyDeleteThankyou very much! I knew I should have waited until the morning to read your blog. It's 10:40 pm here and I can hear noises outside...is it the southerly wind or possums on the roof again...OR is it the ghost of
ReplyDeleteWambie from long ago come to haunt me? OR maybe the bottle of NZ
Sav Blanc I've just finished!
Have a chaser X
DeleteOoooh...chills.
ReplyDeleteI love stories like this but would hate living near that place. I totally believe in ghosts ... of some kind .. spirits..
ReplyDeleteNow that's spooky!
ReplyDeleteOh, you told this so well. I am very glad to have read it while sipping good breakfast coffee, rather than under the light of last night's full moon.
ReplyDeleteU civilised old broad !
DeleteGood coffee! Bliss
Ye gods!!! We used to smell cigarettes in our old house. And things would turn themselves on and off. Never felt scared, probably a family member - my mum died a few months before son was born. Figured it was her trying to get in touch. She'd have been more use doing a few night time feeds and getting the little sod to sleep for me. Hes 20 now and sleeps like a good un.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I used to smell cig smoke too.
DeleteBut that's when the prof used to sneak cigarettes outside
When I was a child, we had the spirit of a Native American that followed us around our tour of Army bases. I once saw him push my sister down the stairs when she was being mean. He followed us to Atlanta when my father retired from the Army, but disappeared when my brothers went off to Vietnam. The ghost in the last house I lived in waited until we had company and then would toss things around. I've never been afraid of them. I guess I assume that being alive gives me the edge.
ReplyDeleteWhat's up with the clowns? Is this a new fad thing to do? There have been several communities around the U.S. that have clowns stalking children. Are they in Wales too?
Attempted murder by an Indian ghost!
DeleteMakes my post look rather pedestrian
Interesting!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was about 15 we lived in a house that was built on the site of an earlier home in which the family died during a scarlet fever epidemic. In the early spring, when the daffodils were blooming, the children could be seen playing outside at night.
That's sweet
DeleteI love ghost stories especially as I saw a ghost of a Celtic Chieftain (as it would be described today) in our house in Caernarfon in 1955 or thereabouts. At the time they were excavating Segontium Roman Fort about a mile from our house. It appeared in our bathroom, but was only visible from the knees up.
ReplyDeleteDo tell more! Bloody hell
Delete29 followers to go......how bloody exciting !!!!
ReplyDelete28...I'm wetting my panties!
ReplyDeleteJOHN! Get outta here with that story!!
ReplyDeleteEnjoy it jimbo
DeleteWe lived in a house that was built in the 1830s. A civil war battle had been fought just over the ridge. Every so often at night we heard footsteps across the old wooden floors, the side door fly open, and a woman scream, "Oh, no!" We later learned that the master of the house had been killed in the nearby battle and the news carried back on horseback that same night.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe in ghosts but I do believe in creative imaginative minds that can create all kinds of scenarios in childhood scary situations....I'm no fun am I?
ReplyDelete27!!!!!
ReplyDeleteSpooky. Me and huuby used to live in a big old Victorian terrace. We could smell pipe smoke at the top of the stairs on the landing. Neither of us smoke, especially pipes. This went on for a few weeks, we then discovered an empty mug with a used peppermint tea bag in it, no ghost just poor domestic skills, we were very young and still living like students x
ReplyDeleteWhen I left my first husband and lived with just my younger son had a 'presence' that was a voice that would speak to me when I was asleep or half asleep to let me know of any dangers. It told me when I had left doors unlocked, things switched on that should have been off and when I had accidently locked one of the cats out at night. I can never remember what it actually said just that a voice was there and when I instantly awoke I knew what I had to do. I have only recently found out in a family conversation that the same voice came once to my son.
ReplyDeleteHe had fallen asleep without setting his alarm the night before a very important A level exam and without a good result he would not have gotten his place at university. Fifteen minutes before the start of the exam he heard a distinctive and very authoritarian voice tell him to get out of bed and GO. Needless to say he leapt out of bed dragged on some clothes and jumped in the car. Sixth form college was a ten minute drive away through numerous sets of traffic lights on a busy main road, but as he approached each set of lights they turned green and he sped on. He reached the examination room just as they were closing the doors and slipped into the room and took his seat. He got good grades and that was the start of his path to a Degree and a Masters.
Loved this!
Delete26!!
ReplyDeleteWhooooooohiooooooooooo
ReplyDelete25! We are getting there!
ReplyDeleteWe moved to our ancient Welsh farmhouse in 1988 with a toddler. From the start I "picked up" (I seem to have a flair for this) on a sad depressed atmosphere at the bottom of the attic stairs (right by our bedroom door). Nothing nasty, you understand, just an atmosphere. We had two more children and they had lots of energy and we had poltergeist activity - footsteps on the stairs - it's odd to hear your husband's footsteps when he is in bed beside you - electrical things going on and off, what have you. A friend who was a proper medium came and said that we "just had an entity" sharing the house with us. Well, his visit upset our friend and that night I heard heavy breathing behind me as I sat where I am sitting now (and coincidentally my son also heard it, up in his attic bedroom that same evening). I thought it must be a Barn Owl on the roof outside as they can sound like an asthmatic old man. There was no atmosphere and I wasn't frightened.
ReplyDeleteThen in the night I woke to go to the loo and as I laid there, thinking, I really WILL have to get up, I noticed a light through the bedroom window (thin curtains) and thought, damn Jim (neighbour), he's out there lamping rabbits again. Anyway the light seemed to come closer and the angle of it was straight to the window, yet the track "Jim" would have been on, angles in another direction. In seconds, a ball of light burst through the curtains into the room and dissipated . . . OK I thought, that IS a bit oddball. Yet I wasn't frightened.
Next morning, myself, my husband and my son were on the landing outside our bedroom door talking about this and all of a sudden we ALL smelt a very strong peardrops smell, as much as to say, you can deny it all you like but I AM HERE!
I think some people are more open to this other dimension and I have had many experiences down the years which show I am one of them - which can be a good thing as well as a spooky one!!
Have you reached your target yet John?
Loved this! A subtle ghost story X and yes I have x
Delete