Suffolk Ghost Tales E-Book

Kirsty Hartsiotis

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 321

Beschreibung

Suffolk – a peaceful, rural county with big skies, rolling fi elds, unspoilt beaches, quaint towns and villages. But all is not as quiet as it seems. Could that be the eerie clanking of gibbet chains at the crossroads? Did you see a desolate face at an upper window or a spectral white form lurking in the hedgerow? Cats are not always lucky – and beware a north Suffolk Broad in the still, small hours of Midsummer Night . . . Kirsty Hartsiotis and Cherry Wilkinson retell, with spine-chilling freshness, thirty fabulous ghost tales from all corners of this beguiling county. So pull up a chair, stoke the fire and prepare to see its gentle landscape in a new light.

Leseprobe

To Heather,daughter of Suffolk andsharer of tales.

First published 2017

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, gl5 2qg

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Kirsty Hartsiotis and Cherry Wilkinson, 2017

The right of Kirsty Hartsiotis and Cherry Wilkinson to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8667 0

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Great Britain

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Map of the Stories

Illustrations

Introduction

  1   The Haunting of William Hurr

  2   Toby, the Black Dragoon

  3   The Treasure Seeker

  4   These Lovers Fled Away

  5   The Rougham Mirage

  6   The Lowestoft Witches

  7   The Constant Maid

  8   The Secret Burial

  9   A Gift from the Sea

10   The Mistletoe Bride

11   If You Go into the Woods

12   Mrs Henrietta Nelson is at Home

13   The Suffolk Rising

14   The Chiming Hours

15   The Ghosts of Landguard Fort

16   Lady in Grey

17   Monks of the Buttermarket

18   The Murderess’s Daughter

19   Newmarket Legends

20   The Mill Cat

21   Kate’s Parlour

22   The Mayfly

23   The Educating of Ellen de Freston

24   The Haunting of Old Hall

25   The Unlayable Ghost

26   The Vagabond Nun

27   The Luck of Hintlesham

28   Witch and Rabbit

29   The Honington Ghost

30   The Afterlife of St Edmund

Bibliography

About the Authors

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are a large number of people to thank for the creation of this book. Many people have assisted with the stories: special thanks go to Heather Phillips MBE for the loan of books, use of stories from her mother’s memoirs, personal recollections and her extensive local knowledge. Thanks go to Boni Sones OBE and Alan Warne for their memories of Sizewell, and to Boni for access to her film, A Dream for Sizewell. Thank you to Majorie Onyett for her story. We’d also like to thank Gabby Ballantine, Cyrilla Havard, Dr Simon Heywood, Dr Katherine Lewis, Sally MacDonald, Dr Victoria Thompson and Rev. Anna Wright for the loan of books, help with Bible texts, assistance with research, location information and Latin translation. We’d also like to thank the Norfolk Wherry Trust’s Albion volunteers, Pegasus Stables, Newmarket, Hintlesham Hall’s front of house team, and the owners of Yaxley Hall for the personal tours we received and the questions answered.

Thanks also are due to Ruth Boyd, Laura Kinnear, Chantelle Smith and Kevan Manwaring for listening to and commenting on the tales, as well as the members of Stroud Out Loud and Newent Storytelling, who have also heard many tales.

The greatest thanks go to our partners, without whose support we couldn’t have written the book you see today. They walked (and drove!) with us on our ghostly journey. Firstly, to Anthony Nanson, who listened to and discussed stories, visited many sites with us, and, most critically, freely gave his considerable editing expertise and copy-editing skills to help us make this book the very best it could be. Secondly, to David Wilkinson for his local knowledge, contacts, assistance with research and for driving us all over the county … and also for the luminescent shrimps.

MAP OF THE STORIES

ILLUSTRATIONS

The cover illustration is by Katherine Soutar and illustrates ‘The Treasure Seeker’. The map and illustrations within each story are by Kirsty Hartsiotis (© 2017). All other illustrations are from the Dover Pictorial Archive and are reproduced in accordance with their terms and conditions.

INTRODUCTION

Suffolk must be one of the spookiest counties in Britain. It was the childhood home of one of Britain’s best-loved writers of ghost stories, M.R. James. Suffolk’s long shingle beaches, its small stately homes, its ancient monuments, its woods and its marshes inspired his tales. And lurking in the woods, the seaside villages and in towns are hundreds of ghosts. Those hanged for murder haunt the place of their gibbeting. Grey ladies drift, disconsolate, in manor houses. Ghosts rise from lonely ponds, flit through town-centre car parks, wreak havoc on people’s property and promise riches that disappear in the light of day.

Most ghost sightings are as ephemeral as the spectres themselves, so we have worked these tales into fully dramatised stories that we hope will be retold again and again. We’ve tried to include many different kinds of ghost, from poltergeists, to imprints of calamitous events, to the traditional ghost who retains his or her personality – as well as a selection of animal spirits. Ultimately, though, the tales we chose are the ones that most caught our imagination. This volume of thirty stories is a companion to Kirsty’s Suffolk Folk Tales, so we’ve avoided repeating the seven ghost stories included in that book: ‘The Rat Pipers of Beccles’, ‘The Suffolk Miracle’, ‘The Guardian of the Breckland’, ‘The Murder in the Red Barn’, ‘Maude Carew’, ‘The Dauntless Girl’ and ‘The Ghost Who Cared Too Much’.

One thing we’ve been struck by is how personal ghost stories are. Unlike many folk tales, where the protagonist is an archetype – a princess, a fool, a third son – ghost tales are usually the stories of real people. Sometimes, the known person is the one recounting the sighting of the ghost. Often, the ghost is a historical personage whose story you can look up in contemporary records, such as Blythburgh’s drummer Toby, or Lowestoft’s Amy Denny and Rose Cullender. On occasion, the ghost’s personal story has faded away, but the history of the place can shed light on the haunting. We’ve dug down as deep as we can into these histories to recreate our own versions of their tales.

Unlike with fairies, giants or dragons, many people still believe in ghosts and have had their own experiences. One chilling tale recounted to us in the course of researching the book came from a neighbour of Cherry’s. During the Second World War, she was working as a land girl near the Saints. Cycling back to the farm one evening after visiting her family in Reydon, she saw ahead of her a figure dressed in a long robe, with long hair that seemed to glow. Unnerved, she pedalled faster to overtake him. It seemed to take forever to get past and, as she drew level, she heard the sound of horses, though there were none nearby. When she finally passed him, she looked back – and no one was there! It isn’t for us to decide what the truth behind these tales is. This was our informant’s lived experience. Just like all those who’ve recorded sightings of ghosts over the centuries, all the way back to the chronicler of the ghost of Leofstan in the twelfth century, those who’ve seen and heard of such things have made up their own minds about what happened. And, as you read and enjoy our tales, so must you.

Kirsty Hartsiotis and Cherry Wilkinson

1

THE HAUNTING OF WILLIAM HURR

William Hurr was a master mariner, captain of his own ship these many years, trading back and forth across the North Sea. In 1793 he was fifty-six years old and starting to think about retiring. His Mary had been on at him to come home to Southwold ever since the Frenchies decided to up and overthrow their king. Hurr knew in his heart of hearts that she was right, especially after the news came that they’d killed old Louis, but he had goods ready and waiting to go. One more trip wouldn’t hurt. Then he’d stay home for good.

Hurr was wrong. In the time it took him to reach Calais, France had declared war on Britain. As soon as they reached the port, there were soldiers all over the boat; his goods were confiscated and his ship impounded.

‘That ship will be serving la République now!’ he was told, then he and his men were marched away.

It was the last he would see of his crew for some time. The men were taken away to barracks with barely more than the clothes they stood up in. Hurr got a clip on the ear for begging they be given their wages. He was told to keep his money to himself – he’d be needing it.

He was lodged first in a house in Calais with other merchant officers, a mix of disgruntled Brits and Dutchmen. The only men who remained with him were his first mate, Sam May, and May’s brother Jim, the second mate. Hurr spoke both French and Dutch, but it was hard, locked up and having to spend their money to pay for bed and board. He wrote to Mary, but was too proud to beg for money to pay for his release.

After a time the French moved them inland. Hurr was restless without the sound of the sea and the bustle of the port.

He muttered to the Mays, ‘Do they think we’re fool enough to stow away on a warship back home?’

The first couple of months they were moved again and again. If Mary replied, her letter was lost somewhere in Picardy. Eventually they ended up in Dieppe. The sailors, English and Dutch alike, relaxed when they heard the gulls and smelt the tang of the sea. But it was still captivity. The months went by and funds were wearing thin. The sailors set to carving and whittling, making model ships and pipes to pay for their vittles.

Having a place to rest your head and enough to eat only goes so far in satisfying a man’s needs. They whiled away the time with cards and dice, but that wasn’t all. At first the locals had steered clear of the foreigners, but after a while some of the women, realising the commercial opportunities, started to visit, selling food – and other things.

There was one woman who caught Hurr’s eye. Her name was Genevieve. As her visits became more frequent, he realised she was as taken with him as he was with her. She was a fine woman: dark hair, dark eyes and a fiery tongue. She was no slip of lass, being a widow in her thirties, but to Hurr she was perfection.

The only problem was Mary back in Southwold.

‘You have to tell her you’re a married man, Will,’ Sam May told him.

‘It’s not fair on Mary, and it’s not fair on the lass,’ said Jim. ‘We’ve seen how she looks at you. She’s thinking you’re a keeper, and no mistake.’

But Hurr said nothing, even though Genevieve often spoke of a future for them together. He let her draw her own conclusions. If she thought him widowed, where was the harm in this foreign land?

The months turned into a year, then two. Even as he carried on with Genevieve, Hurr was writing home to Mary, asking for money now, for his release. He wasn’t proud of it, but a man couldn’t be a captive all his life. Eventually the money came, with sad words from his son: Mary was ill; would he please hurry home?

When he told Genevieve he was going home, she was thrilled.

‘We can start a new life back in your Southwold, Guillaume. You can fish, and I will keep house for you.’

Now he wished he’d taken the Mays’ advice. He told her that he was still married, that he had been married to Mary for thirty years and more. He stoically withstood the shouting and screaming that followed, knowing he well deserved it. But Genevieve was made of sterner stuff than he’d thought.

When he explained his wife was ill, her lips thinned and she said, ‘Guillaume, this is how it shall be. If your wife she is dead when you return, you will write to me and I will come. And if she is not – well, I am young, I will wait.’

Hurr had to smile. She was magnificent! Cravenly, he agreed.

When Hurr got home to Southwold, Mary was alive and, if not well, clearly getting better. Genevieve had to be put from his mind. He bought shares in his son’s fishing boat and began to rebuild his life.

After a month or so of his being home, a strange thing happened. Mary began to complain that he was poking and pinching her in bed. After two long years of forced inactivity and now enduring the long, hard hours of a fisherman, Hurr had no energy to do anything in bed except sleep.

‘Then who is poking me?’ cried Mary.

Hurr shrugged, assuming whatever was troubling her would stop soon enough. But it didn’t. Every time Mary woke him to tell him to stop, he’d been sound asleep. He protested his innocence every time, but she’d just shake her head and mutter that some things had been easier when he was away.

Then, one night, he saw it happen. In the moonlight slanting through the window, Mary’s face suddenly snapped from side to side, as if someone was slapping her. She began to writhe about and, to his horror, he saw the skin go in on her face as if someone was poking her. Through this Mary slept, but then she was suddenly jerked upwards and her eyes flew open in terror. He reached for her, but before he could grab her she was pitched right out of bed.

Hurr couldn’t understand it, but what soon became clear was that it only happened when he was there. Lying on a pallet by the fire in the kitchen he’d examine his conscience and, though he tried not to, remember Genevieve’s soft embrace. Was his own dissatisfaction causing the strange thing that had been happening?

One night, his old bones were aching too much for him to get to sleep on his pallet, so up he got in his nightshirt and went outside, brooding out over South Green to the sea. It was full moon, and he stood there a while, thinking on the past.

Suddenly, a white cat appeared not twenty paces before him on the Green. Cats move fast, but it was as if it had been conjured from the moonlight. And no ordinary cat, this – it was as big as a dog! Hurr rubbed his eyes, thinking the moonlight had tricked him, but no, there it was, larger than life, staring at him with eyes that seemed to bore into his soul. As he stared back, Hurr realised that not only was the cat huge, but it was glowing, as if it were part moonlight itself.

‘Whsst!’ he cried.

The cat just stared.

Hurr grabbed his stick and ran at it, crying, ‘Get out, cat!’

Any normal cat would have leapt away, but this one held its ground, hissing and arching its back. Then, it reared up, getting bigger and bigger till a huge white shadow loomed over him and he fell to his knees in terror. The cat was gone, but in its place was a glowing white mare with steam pooling from her nostrils.

For a long time, horse and man stared at each other, then, with a swish of her tail, she turned away towards the town. As soon as she was gone, Hurr felt a tugging in his chest. He found himself scrambling to his feet and, in his stockinged feet, following her as if in a dream. It was as if an invisible cord was pulling him after her but he never caught up. As they came on to Queen Street he realised her hooves made no sound on the cobbles. It was late, no lights anywhere save for the moon, but she illuminated the street with every step.

She led him to Market Place, then, with a lift of her head as if she sensed something, she vanished. The invisible cord snapped and Hurr stumbled to a halt. For a few moments, he was able to wonder what was going on.

Then, coming up East Street, as if from the sea, he saw a funeral procession. At the front a solemn-faced priest marched, the mourners in their broad-brimmed hats behind, carrying flickering candelabras, silent men carrying the funeral bier, all draped and plumed in black, and weeping people behind. In Hurr’s heart there rose a terrible grief. As the procession passed him by and turned up Church Street, he felt that tug in his chest again, and his feet followed after them in the echoing silence.

St Edmund’s rose up, white-roofed in the moonlight, windows dark and empty. The mourners stepped through the gates into the churchyard, but as Hurr followed, the procession vanished. He stood shivering in his dew-soaked stockings for a long time, trying to make sense of what had happened. The longer he stood there, the more unreal it all became.

The next day Hurr rose early and went down to the beach where his boat was moored. Before he’d done a thing, Sam May, who’d been released shortly after him, came over with a very serious expression on his face and a letter in his hand.

‘It’s from France,’ he said.

Afterwards, Hurr would say he knew before he broke the seal. It was from Genevieve’s family – sent to May, they explained, lest Hurr’s wife saw it. Genevieve hadn’t waited to hear from Hurr, they said. She had told them her heart demanded that she see him again, and, wife or no wife, she was determined to have him. Almost as soon as Hurr had left she too had taken sail. But there was a storm, her ship was wrecked and all souls on it were lost.

As he stood with the letter in his hand and the tears tracking down his face, Hurr knew whose unhappy spirit had troubled his wife, and his heart bled for them all.

After the letter came, Mary was able to rest easy in her bed, almost as if Genevieve was content that he knew she was dead. But Hurr knew he had done both his wife and his lover wrong, and feared he would have to atone for his misdeeds.

In 1799 Mary died. She’d not been truly well since before Hurr came home, but he couldn’t help wonder whether the haunting had hurried her end.

He took to walking the beach at night, poultering, searching for anything useful washed in by storm and tide. One night, when he was up by the Field Stile, he heard the shingle rattling and looked up to see someone walking towards him. From the line of his clothes in the moonlight, he could see it was no old fisherman like himself, but a gentleman in a tailcoat and britches. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Why would a gentleman be out here on a cold night like this, so far from the town?

Sure the man had seen him, Hurr stopped and leant on his stick. Poultering wasn’t illegal, but you’d not want to be caught doing it by the gentry. The man stopped when he was within spitting distance. In the moonlight Hurr saw that his face was cruel and cold.

He said, ‘Come along with me.’

All at once Hurr felt that strange tugging in his chest, and his eyes went wide. He had no desire to come along with this man! He looked down at the ground and, as he did, saw that the man’s feet were not feet at all, but cloven hooves.

With a shock he realised that the Devil himself had come to collect him for payment for his wrongs. Well, he wasn’t having it!

‘No, I shall not go with you,’ he cried. ‘By the help of God I have got so far, and by the help of God I hope to get home.’

At the name of God, the figure gave a shrieking cry and a plume of fire and smoke arose around him, swallowing him whole. Hurr was enveloped in the stink of rotten eggs, as if the maw of hell had opened – and perhaps it had.

He walked back slowly to his house. It was empty, as it always was since Mary had gone. He sank into his chair and prodded the fire into life. He’d had a lucky escape there, he thought, but then he looked around the empty room and his shoulders slumped. Escape? Maybe he was being punished after all, with neither of the women he’d loved here to put warmth in his life.

2

TOBY, THE BLACK DRAGOON

The Reverend Ralph Blois stood in the nave of Blythburgh church and sighed. The church, like the village, was in a sorry state in that year of Our Lord 1750. Ralph’s family, the landowners, did what they could, but they couldn’t maintain the church as they wished. Ralph held the living of Walberswick as well, and there the people had built a new little church in the ruins of the old.

‘The Lord will provide,’ he said to himself.

The villagers, he knew, had more pragmatic ways of providing for themselves. The running of contraband had become quite an industry all along the Suffolk coast. Ralph chose to turn a blind eye, since it helped keep bellies full. His silence was rewarded every now and then with a keg of brandy tucked inside the vestry.

So, when a detachment of dragoons arrived in Blythburgh charged with suppressing the smuggling trade, Ralph was as unhappy as the villagers. He knew the dragoons’ commander, Sir Robert Rich, a Beccles man, and didn’t much care for him. He had a reputation for mistreating his men. He wasn’t around a great deal, but this was a mixed blessing, for the soldiers were an unruly bunch.

Under the pretext of spying on the smugglers, they spent a lot of time in the inns and alehouses, bragging about their exploits in Holland and bemoaning the injustice of being sent to such a backwater. Ralph witnessed a fight or two and had to intervene when tankards and tempers overspilled. The villagers hated the dragoons, but he heard stories of battles, fear and loss from those soldiers who had sought him out.

‘Perhaps they deserve a little respite,’ he thought. ‘If only they would behave!’

The village was in uproar after a bevy of dragoons spent hours knocking on doors, searching houses, calling out blasphemies, and all the while that black lad, Toby, rat-a-tat-tatting on his drum.

The villagers didn’t dare speak out, but Ralph heard their mutterings.

‘Our women aren’t safe on the streets!’ they’d bluster.

But some whispered, ‘A drunken dragoon can’t interfere with our business, if you see what I mean.’

Ralph’s thoughts were drawn back to the drummer. The young man’s skin was black as night. Not a common sight in rural Suffolk! Black drummers were not unusual in the army, but here he stuck out like a sore thumb. ‘Is he the Devil?’ some of the villages asked in their ignorance.

Toby certainly had a devilish streak. Sober, he was all smiles and charm. The village men muttered about the things the women liked to say about him! But once in the tavern, with a tankard or two of ale inside him, he’d swear and brawl like the rest of them.

Soon, the rowdiest of the dragoons, Toby included, were barred from the local hostelries. But there were plenty of folks ready to sell them liquor. The dragoons would often meet at a lonely barn on the heathland sheep walks between Blythburgh and Walberswick.

Ralph sighed again and sank wearily to his knees to pray.

Moments later, the church door crashed open and two village men burst in.

‘Mr Blois, you in here? Come you quick, sir! Summat bad has happened!’

Outside in the street a crowd was gathering. In their midst was a group of men dragging the stumbling figure of Toby. Other men were carrying a makeshift stretcher on which lay a shrouded form. Ralph called for quiet – and an explanation. After some jostling, shepherd Dick Bullen was pushed forward.

‘We found them on the walks, sir, early this morning. Thought they were asleep till the lassie couldn’t be roused. Dead, sir, and this one here’ – he jabbed his finger at Toby – ‘dead drunk. Swore he didn’t know what’d happened. A likely story, if you ask me!’

Ralph went to the stretcher and lifted the cloth. The young woman’s face was waxen in death. For a second he didn’t know her, but then he realised. ‘Annie Blakemore from Walberswick. I must go to her family.’

Toby was secured in Blythburgh Gaol to await the coroner’s inquest. The villagers’ feelings were at fever pitch, even before the coroner arrived.

‘We knew something like this would happen!’ they cried. ‘Hang him! Hang the lot of them!’

As soon as he could, Ralph visited Toby in the gaol, and found him in great distress, protesting his innocence.

‘I swear I never laid a hand on her, sir. She just appeared out of nowhere and fell at my feet.’

‘You were drunk, Toby,’ said Ralph. ‘How can you know what you did?’

‘I just know,’ said Toby, his head in his hands. ‘But I really was very drunk …’

Ralph pondered Toby’s words. He knew a little more than many about Anne. Her family were as sure as the rest that Toby had murdered her, but Ralph recalled that on occasion they’d thought the girl possessed. Would that not explain the fits she suffered, her restlessness, her constant wandering on the heath? They’d begged him to exorcise her demons, but Ralph was sure that it was some ailment that troubled her, not possession.

Could Toby’s protestations be the truth? Or had he succumbed to violence?

Ralph hoped the coroner’s inquest would prove things one way or the other. He decided he would speak of Anne’s condition only if there was no evidence she’d been attacked. He’d known Coroner Ward for years and trusted him to conduct a fair hearing.

On the eve of the inquest, urgent family business called Ralph away. In his absence the jury of local men pronounced Toby guilty of murder and on 30 June, before Ralph could return, Toby was taken to Ipswich Gaol to await trial at the Bury Assizes.

Ralph had to assume that justice had been done and Toby was a murderer. But doubt niggled at his mind.

At Anne’s funeral service in Walberswick, the people of Blythburgh joined their neighbours in mourning. It was an angry day, and the ill feeling towards Toby – and the dragoons – grew stronger as the summer wore on and the date of the trial drew near.

On 25 August a contingent from Blythburgh was at Bury, Ralph included. Toby was charged not only with murder but with rape and defilement. Ralph repeated Toby’s plea of innocence, but it was hardly heard in the slew of evidence against him.

‘She was murdered,’ cried one.

‘Strangled,’ cried another.

‘He’s no better than an animal!’ shouted a third.

Ralph didn’t mention Anne’s condition, not wishing to blacken her name when there was so obviously no need.

The judge did not waste time: the verdict was guilty on all counts. Toby would be hanged at Ipswich and his body hung in chains on a gibbet at Blythburgh.

‘If I had the power,’ declared the judge, ‘to extend the legal penalties, I should exercise it in this case.’ Quite what he had in mind he did not reveal.

There was little Ralph could do. The prison chaplain told him that when Toby was bundled into a prison carriage and driven back to Ipswich Gaol after the trial, he saw through the bars the mail coach approaching.

‘I beg you, let me be tied behind that coach that I may run for my life,’ he cried.

‘Who do you think you are, you black heathen?’ the guard had growled. ‘It’s the hangman’s noose for you.’

Toby was executed on 31 August. The villagers were pleased when the news came, but what they were really waiting for was the gibbeting.

On the morning of 14 September Ralph went to the crossroads on Blythburgh’s heath. Stark against the sky, the newly erected gibbet awaited its gruesome burden. Ralph bowed his head in prayer. By noon a large crowd had gathered, eager for the spectacle. From Blythburgh, Walberswick, Southwold and all around they came. Anne’s family stood slightly apart. Ralph hurried over to offer comfort.

As the tumbril rolled into view, a hush fell. Toby’s tarred and iron-bound body was drawn up and suspended from the gibbet. When the corpse was revealed the crowd erupted into jeers and shouts. Mistress Blakemore was overcome, and Ralph sought to guide her away. Behind him came the neighing of panicked horses. Turning back, he saw one rear up, and a man fall. The man was named as a Mr Bokenham from Southwold. He didn’t survive the day.

‘Toby’s claimed another life,’ the rumour began. ‘His evil spirit is walking.’

A year passed. Toby’s grisly cadaver remained a source of both fascination and revulsion. Since Bokenham’s death stories of unearthly apparitions had been shared around the fires in homes and hostelries.

‘We were coming back along over the heath last even, John Price and me,’ said Saul Blower to the company assembled in the White Hart. ‘All of a sudden up behind us comes this carriage. Out of nowhere it came, bor. Threw ourselves down in the heather, we did, and that there carriage were pulled by horses with no hids, I swear to God.’

‘I heard Matthew Todd had seen that too on the walks,’ cried Jim Tuthill. ‘Only, this one had a driver, a black man, and he had no hid neither!’

‘You’re daft, the lot of you,’ called out the innkeeper. ‘Why’d you go wandering up there at night, with that evil spirit clanking his chains and moaning?’

In the corner, Ralph stared morosely at his pie and despaired of his flock. They’d never stay at home, not with their nightly business on the coast to attend to.

The door opened, and Ralph smiled to see Mr Ward, the coroner. The village had not seen a crime that required a coroner since Toby, and Ralph had not seen Ward since before then.

‘The people are working themselves into a frenzy with all this talk of phantoms,’ Ralph said. ‘Perhaps it is because they feel guilt for Toby’s death. But justice had to be done, did it not?’

Coroner Ward put down his tankard. ‘I hoped we’d not speak of that day. It still gives me nightmares.’

He spoke quietly. Ralph had to lean close to hear him. ‘In all my years of holding inquests, I never felt afraid for my life till that day. They were so angry … My mind has been troubled ever since.’

‘What do you mean?’

Ward lowered his voice further. ‘If I was to say to you that there was not a mark on that young woman’s body, what would you think?’

Ralph sat stunned. ‘He swore to me that he was innocent.’ He thought of Anne and those fits she’d suffered … ‘Dear Lord, what have we done?’

After some wrangling with the authorities, Ralph arranged for Toby’s remains to be taken down and buried near the gibbet. As he said a few words over the lonely grave he wished it could have been different. But Toby was a convicted murderer. There was no way he could be laid to rest in consecrated ground, was there?

Not long after, a tale reached Ralph’s ears that some of Toby’s fellow dragoons had removed the bones at dead of night and reburied them in the churchyard. He dismissed it as gossip – until he found a patch of roughly replaced turf below the east window.

‘Toby, my lad, if you were wrongly served, then you are welcome here.’

When he heard rumours in the White Hart of a spectral carriage seen careering towards the churchyard wall then taking to the air and disappearing among the tombs, he smiled grimly to himself and offered up a prayer.

The stories of ghosts and the like might well have been just the talk of smugglers, to help clear the way for their night-time activities. A tale arose that poor Anne, safely buried in Walberswick churchyard, was walking too, as restless in death as in life. The sheep walks are long gone, the busy A12 thundering through them. Her shade flits between the cars and lorries on her endless unknown quest.

As for Toby, did he find peace or does his spirit roam the heathland still? A fragment of those old walks still bears his name. What was for a time a pretty and popular picnic site now lies desolate, tarred once more by association with activities undesirable to the locals. But the name stands as a memorial to a high-spirited young soldier, maybe guilty of no more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

3

THE TREASURE SEEKER

When old Farmer Copping died, him who had the farm right next to Clopton Hall, near Wickhambrook, everyone reckoned that he must have treasure stashed away. Wasn’t he a highly successful farmer, and a bachelor to boot? But when the new owner of the farm searched the house from top to bottom, he found nothing.

Three days after the old man’s funeral, a farmworker walking by saw a tall, dark figure standing in the farmyard. If he hadn’t been to the funeral and seen the coffin lowered into the ground, he’d have sworn it was Farmer Copping standing there, large as life. He yelled out and the figure vanished. It gave him quite a turn, but when he’d calmed down the farmworker realised what it meant. It was a sign! The treasure was buried in the farmyard. But when he and the other workers turned the yard over, no treasure did they find.

The new owner converted the farmhouse into workers’ accommodation. The farmworker who’d seen the apparition moved in with his family, hoping that old Copping would show himself once more.

The farmworker had just the one child, Jack. He was a lazy lad who liked nothing more than to while away his time chucking stones into the pond by the lane. His mother despaired of him, but his father shook his head and said, ‘If that old boy’d just show us where that treasure is, the lad could be as lazy as ’e loikes.’

One night Jack awoke to the sense that someone was watching him. When he opened his eyes, he saw a tall, dark figure looming over the bed. The figure reached out a hand to him and plucked at the bedclothes. Then it beckoned to him.

Jack was so scared that he just cried, ‘Go away!’ – and the figure vanished.

Jack had some trouble getting to sleep the next night. In his mind’s eye he saw, over and over, the dark figure reaching down. At last he did sleep, but moments later, it seemed, his eyes opened and there, once more, was the tall, dark figure. It was reaching down and it tugged the blanket half off him and beckoned.

‘Go away!’ cried Jack.

Once more the figure vanished.

The third night Jack lay awake, hoping that if he did the apparition wouldn’t come. To no avail. It bent right over him, beckoning, and the bedclothes were all over the floor …

‘Go away, damn you!’ cried Jack.

The figure vanished and at that same moment Jack’s father burst through the door.

‘What’re you yelling about?’

Still full of terror, Jack explained what had happened the last three nights. If he’d been expecting sympathy he was disappointed.

‘You mazy fool,’ cried his dad. ‘That’ll have been the old boy, wanting to show you – you, Jack – the treasure, and now you’ve blown it!’

Blown it Jack had, for the tall, dark figure never troubled him again. Jack was furious with himself. He threw a good many more stones into the pond over the next few years. Without the treasure, he became a farmworker like his dad. There was hardly a day went by when he didn’t chastise himself for throwing up the opportunity of living like a gentleman who didn’t have to work.

Then one night he was in the White Horse in Wickhambrook and a friend was telling a tale he’d heard off a Melford man.

‘’E said there was a grut battle between Melford and Acton, with that Boadicea trouncing them Romans, the Ninth Legion, ’e said, and their treasure was all stolen, save for one chest o’ gold, and thas wholly lost, as there’s a ghostie guarding that in Wimbrell Pond!’

Jack laughed along with everyone else, but as he was walking home it struck him. Treasure guarded by a ghost! Ghosts were sitting on treasure – treasure that he could win! Hadn’t he already seen one ghost? He’d not be frit again! The next day he went back to his friend and got the whole story out of him. He came home all fired up with excitement. He began to read up on the subject, reckoning that if there were two ghosts hiding treasure within a few miles of each other, then there must be more.

His hunch was right. There was so much hidden treasure out there that he was quids in – if he could just get past the ghosts! So he quit his job, packed a bag, and with a shovel on his back, and a Bible in his pocket, off he set.