Spooked! II by John Perry
| It was a dark ,mid summer night,. But I'll start at the beginning.............. Back in the early 60's I used to fish a lake in Sussex a lot, at night, for carp. It was an old clay pit for brick making, dating back to the late 1800's., tree lined an about 7 acres. It had a narrow causeway which jutted out half way up the lake almost splitting it in two, again tree lined. There were only 8 of us that fished it at night and as was fashionable in those days we had to call ourselves a 'Specimen Hunters Group'.---sounded good. I had a day and a half off work so decided to pre bait it in the afternoon (small par boiled new potatoes then as boilies had not been invented). The bait was then impaled on a size 2 gold strike hook (no hair rigs then either). I arrived later that evening, set up one rod (that's all we used) and my deck chair, yes! my deck chair, (borrowed from Worthing beach'). I went to have a chat with the only other angler there that night, an old pal named Jack, he opted to fish the far side of the lake, so we had the causeway between us. I had put some bread crusts along the margins by my swim and at 11 pm I heard a carp 'clooping'! the free offerings. My crust was right in front of me under my rod tip, the carp 'clooped! ' closer and then the silver foil (yes! silver foil) hit the butt ring later a 10Ib'er came to the net (good start.) It was a dark night ,we had a rule that we would not use torches but it didn't matter because my night sight in those days was good. At about 1am. I heard a sobbing noise coming from the end of the causeway, it was a pitiful female sobbing so I knew it wasn't Jack who was further across the lake,. to say the least I was slightly concerned. I decided to walk round the lake to the causeway without a torch (I knew every inch of the bank). When I got to the start of the causeway I bumped into Jack who had heard the same sobbing. We inched our way along the narrow causeway until we came near the end. What we saw halted us in our tracks. On the end of the headland, against the pitch darkness of the night was a circle of only faint light, within that circle was a cloaked and hooded figure, she was still sobbing and we could see her shoulders moving as she wept.. Jack called out "are you alright dear" and the figure and the circle of light vanished. Jack and I made our way back to the car park and spent the rest of the night drinking hot coffee and discussing what we had witnessed. We both knew we had seen ghost. I was not going to let it rest there, so in my spare time I researched the archives of our local paper. I discovered that in the late 1800's a 19 year old unmarried mother had been expelled from her family home and then leapt into the lake with her child . Both were drowned. I continued to fish that lake and was the first to catch a 20 pound'er from there later, but I always thought about that poor girl. Jack sadly died 4 years later. This is a true story and for obvious reasons I won't name the lake. The ghost, to my knowledge, has not been seen again and I later found out that it is very unusual for two persons to witness a ghost at the same time. Sleep well!. John Perry |
re-generated Feb 2007