Allotment Ghosts

[Tempest63]

As a reformed believer in all things paranormal it surprises me that, when I’m alone at the allotment, I often get weirded out by the feeling that a presence is near me.
I’ve never seen anything there, or if I have, it’s a pigeon or similar flying by that I catch in my peripheral vision.
It happened again this morning on a couple of occasions whilst watering.
People can get very attached to an allotment so I wonder if they could linger on in some way, stone tape theory maybe?

T63

 

[Yithian]

As a reformed believer in all things paranormal it surprises me that, when I’m alone at the allotment, I often get weirded out by the feeling that a presence is near me.
I’ve never seen anything there, or if I have, it’s a pigeon or similar flying by that I catch in my peripheral vision.
It happened again this morning on a couple of occasions whilst watering.
People can get very attached to an allotment so I wonder if they could linger on in some way, stone tape theory maybe?

T63

This is weak on detail, I'm afraid, but I feel fairly sure that I've read accounts of situations in which the presence of a regular human activity has been inferred but is later proved to have been impossible.

Which is to say, there is a regularity to allotment work as there is most work: weekly, seasonal and soothingly repetitive; it lends itself to these scenarios:

Old Fred arrives, disappears into his dilapidated shed for a few minutes, comes out with wellies on and his pipe in his mouth, and sets to work thinning out his peas or what have you. You've seen his figure, heard the rattle of the lock that always sticks and caught a whiff of the smoke so often that it assumes the qualities of a 'background phenomenon', labelled 'pay no heed' in much the same way as mood music is simultaneously present yet imperceptible to consciousness. You might pay more attention to it all from time to time, but for the most part, you yourself are lost in the non-reflective consciousness of a repetitive task or three—like turning over the new patch for the lettuce while half listening to TMS.​

​

And then one week you get home from the allotment to hear from your wife that Old Fred was killed in a road traffic accident earlier in the week—or perhaps it was a Great British heart-attack—but you can't shake the nagging sense that he was there among the rows of potatoes that very morning; at any rate, you could swear that someone was smoking his Old Holborn... ​

Of course, it's likely all a product of your pattern-recognition equipment making a lazy jump too many, but it's the mechanics of how and why it does so—and where the threshold lies—that can be so interesting.

 

[Min Bannister]

Have you had the allotment a long time? Has this feeling occurred just recently? It is probably quite rare to get an allotment to yourself as they always seem to be busy. Could this add to the creepy feeling?

 

[Tempest63]

Have you had the allotment a long time? Has this feeling occurred just recently? It is probably quite rare to get an allotment to yourself as they always seem to be busy. Could this add to the creepy feeling?

We’ve had it for about 5 years now. I tend to get there very early as it is a battle to get to the tap. Generally i’ve been and gone before anyone else arrives. I do believe it is probably in the last 18 months that I have started to get the feeling that someone is watching over me, it is only fleeting and at first I would spin round expecting to see another allotment holder. There is one particular overgrown plot that is not being tended where most of that feeling of being watched emanates from.
I occasionally hear snatches of words but it is so quiet there in the morning that it is the noises from the wildlife, birds that I hear and turn it into something it is not.
The sensation is not scary as such but, like anytime you feel someone is watching you, you find it a bit weird.

 

[Tempest63]

No spooks, spectres or ghouls at the allotment this morning. Just me and the songbirds

 

[Sabresonic]

We’ve had it for about 5 years now. I tend to get there very early as it is a battle to get to the tap. Generally i’ve been and gone before anyone else arrives. I do believe it is probably in the last 18 months that I have started to get the feeling that someone is watching over me, it is only fleeting and at first I would spin round expecting to see another allotment holder. There is one particular overgrown plot that is not being tended where most of that feeling of being watched emanates from.
I occasionally hear snatches of words but it is so quiet there in the morning that it is the noises from the wildlife, birds that I hear and turn it into something it is not.
The sensation is not scary as such but, like anytime you feel someone is watching you, you find it a bit weird.

Could be the trees or plant spirits watching you.

 

[Who me]

Very nice tempest 63 are the forensic teams finished under the sheet thingys Can’t get an allotment for love nor money where I live

 

[Tempest63]

Very nice tempest 63 are the forensic teams finished under the sheet thingys Can’t get an allotment for love nor money where I live

The nets are to keep the cabbage whites off the Brassica. The scaffolders at work tend to lose a roll in my direction every now and then.

If I need to dispose of a body I have an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden. I reckon a reasonable dig in the shelter, behind closed doors could hold 6 to 8 cadavers. Fill in the Anderson shelter, flatten it off and put a greenhouse over the top and voila...bodies gone.

 

[Tempest63]

Can’t get an allotment for love nor money where I live

That’s a shame, it’s getting harder where we are but the local authorities who manage the allotments don’t come down hard enough on those that don’t tend them. Of the 12 on our little row 2 are completely unattended and another two less than a quarter of the plots are used.

 

[PeteS]

This is weak on detail, I'm afraid, but I feel fairly sure that I've read accounts of situations in which the presence of a regular human activity has been inferred but is later proved to have been impossible.

Which is to say, there is a regularity to allotment work as there is most work: weekly, seasonal and soothingly repetitive; it lends itself to these scenarios:

Old Fred arrives, disappears into his dilapidated shed for a few minutes, comes out with wellies on and his pipe in his mouth, and sets to work thinning out his peas or what have you. You've seen his figure, heard the rattle of the lock that always sticks, and caught a whiff of the smoke so often that it assumes the qualities of a 'background phenomenon' and is labelled 'pay no heed' in much the same way as mood music is simultaneously present yet invisible to consciousness. You might pay more attention to it all from time to time, but for the most part you yourself are lost in the non-reflective consciousness of a repetitive task or three--like turning over the new patch for the lettuce while half listening to TMS.​

​

And then one week you get home from the allotment to hear from your wife that Old Fred was killed in a road traffic accident earlier in the week, but you can't shake the nagging sense that he was there among the rows of potatoes that very morning, and you could swear that someone was smoking his tobacco. ​

Of course, it's likely all a product of your pattern-recognition equipment making a lazy jump too many, but it's the mechanics of how and why it does so, and where the threshold lies that can be so interesting.

I've come to the conclusion that this does explain some "sightings" of people who have passed over. I mentioned in another post that Ms Petes has worked in care homes and that one particular elderly chap was so enamoured with the home that everyone knew he never wanted to leave - he was a permanent fixture. He did die at the home and more than one member of staff on shifts days later could not believe he had died because they had "just" seen him shuffling down the corridor in his slippers as was his wont. He was assumed to be there, so in effect he was.

 

[bugmum]

The nets are to keep the cabbage whites off the Brassica. The scaffolders at work tend to lose a roll in my direction every now and then.

If I need to dispose of a body I have an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden. I reckon a reasonable dig in the shelter, behind closed doors could hold 6 to 8 cadavers. Fill in the Anderson shelter, flatten it off and put a greenhouse over the top and voila...bodies gone.

A friend of mine has just acquired an allotment up in Colchester, and dug up a pair of legs there the other day. They belonged to the bottom half of a mannequin, but it did scare the bejezus out of it when she first unearthed them!

 

[Tempest63]

A friend of mine has just acquired an allotment up in Colchester, and dug up a pair of legs there the other day. They belonged to the bottom half of a mannequin, but it did scare the bejezus out of it when she first unearthed them!

Likely an old scarecrow. She’ll jump when she digs up the head.

 

[Sgt Girth]

6 to 8 cadavers eh? Good to know......I’ll drop you a private message! What is the going rate nowadays for cadaver disposal?

 

[Coypu]

6 to 8 cadavers eh? Good to know......I’ll drop you a private message! What is the going rate nowadays for cadaver disposal?

Depends who is the departed, with modern forensics removing all traces is difficult. The link below will help.

Edit... Forgot to mention, a good friend will help you dispose of a body...
Your very best friend will help you create one..

 

[Sgt Girth]

Ah, piggies.....classic disposal technique.

 

[Who me]

Good thinking tempest I’ve got a list which I will try to whittle down to 6 or 7 and deliver them even give you a hand with the digging

 

[Sgt Girth]

Hmmmm.....I think Tempest ought to be treated the same as any other service provider....maybe give him the odd cuppa to keep his spirits up but if he’s being paid a fair wage then he should do all the bloody digging!

 

[Tempest63]

6 to 8 cadavers eh? Good to know......I’ll drop you a private message! What is the going rate nowadays for cadaver disposal?

If you have a friend with an asbestos skip and the double bags to put the bits in, I think it’s free!

 

[escargot]

Anyway... back to the subject at hand.

Could there be an underground stream or two in the area?

 

[Sgt Girth]

Who the heck would have a skip made out of asbestos?

 

[Spookdaddy]

Some years back I was working on my flat, renovating some casing around a recessed window. It wasn't a straightforward fix, and at one point I scribbled a few calculations on some exposed woodwork. While I was doing so, I noticed a little higher on the same piece some more figures. These workings were in Imperial measurements and in a much nicer copperplate style than my own primitive scrawl - but I realised with a shiver down the spine that they were the exact same workings out as my own; the same calculations, related to the same practical puzzle – but separated from each other by around a hundred years.

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to express the following properly - but the effect was not simply that of feeling instantly connected, through a repeated action, to someone from the past, but that myself and that Edwardian joiner were somehow scratching our heads over the same problem at the same time.

(Bear with me – I will get to a relevant point eventually.)

I’ve worked on quite a few restoration projects, and although the above experience was probably the one that inspired the most forceful jolt of connection, instances that induce a sort of non-corporeal workplace camaraderie with the long dead are not unusual, or, I believe, limited to my own experience.

I wonder if the consciousness (or, probably it’s not that conscious at all) that you are repeating the actions of people in the past, in almost exactly the same way those actions would have been performed (or at least in ways that are recognisably similar) creates some sort of psychological echo effect that makes you aware of all the other physical actions that have taken place and of which your own are themselves an element of the reverberation. And maybe a side effect of the process is that we become sensitive to the idea that our companions in toil might even be keeping a watchful eye on our efforts.

This can probably happen in all sorts of environments, but I very strongly suspect it is much more viscerally powerful when connected to physical action. And there are not many actions more visceral – or venerable - than sinking a spade into the earth.

Or it’s just ghosts.

 

[Lb8535]

Some years back I was working on my flat, renovating some casing around a recessed window. It wasn't a straightforward fix, and at one point I scribbled a few calculations on some exposed woodwork. While I was doing so, I noticed a little higher on the same piece some more figures. These workings were in Imperial measurements and in a much nicer copperplate style than my own primitive scrawl - but I realised with a shiver down the spine that they were the exact same workings out as my own; the same calculations, related to the same practical puzzle – but separated from each other by around a hundred years.

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to express the following properly - but the effect was not simply that of feeling instantly connected, through a repeated action, to someone from the past, but that myself and that Edwardian joiner were somehow scratching our heads over the same problem at the same time.

(Bear with me – I will get to a relevant point eventually.)

I’ve worked on quite a few restoration projects, and although the above experience was probably the one that inspired the most forceful jolt of connection, instances that induce a sort of non-corporeal workplace camaraderie with the long dead are not unusual, or, I believe, limited to my own experience.

I wonder if the consciousness (or, probably it’s not that conscious at all) that you are repeating the actions of people in the past, in almost exactly the same way those actions would have been performed (or at least in ways that are recognisably similar) creates some sort of psychological echo effect that makes you aware of all the other physical actions that have taken place and of which your own are themselves an element of the reverberation. And maybe a side effect of the process is that we become sensitive to the idea that our companions in toil might even be keeping a watchful eye on our efforts.

This can probably happen in all sorts of environments, but I very strongly suspect it is much more viscerally powerful when connected to physical action. And there are not many actions more visceral – or venerable - than sinking a spade into the earth.

Or it’s just ghosts.

Happens in performing arts all the time.

 

[Tempest63]

Anyway... back to the subject at hand.
Could there be an underground stream or two in the area?

I do not believe there would be an underground stream under the allotments. The River Brain runs nearby and joins the River Blackwater about a mile away.
I looked at the ordnance survey map for the area and that doesn’t indicate any rivers or waterways running under the allotments. It also dries out very quickly in the summer.
This was Witch Country, Matthew Hopkins came from Manningtree, 25 ish miles to the North of us.
Three supposed Witches from Hatfield Peverel, the next town South of us by a couple of miles, were executed. One of the Witches was Agnes Waterhouse, the first woman executed as a Witch in England, but this was before Hopkins was born. Maybe the ghosts of the essex witches haunt the train line which runs next the allotment?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Waterhouse

 

[Dick Turpin]

I do not believe there would be an underground stream under the allotments. The River Brain runs nearby and joins the River Blackwater about a mile away.
I looked at the ordnance survey map for the area and that doesn’t indicate any rivers or waterways running under the allotments. It also dries out very quickly in the summer.
This was Witch Country, Matthew Hopkins came from Manningtree, 25 ish miles to the North of us.
Three supposed Witches from Hatfield Peverel, the next town South of us by a couple of miles, were executed. One of the Witches was Agnes Waterhouse, the first woman executed as a Witch in England, but this was before Hopkins was born. Maybe the ghosts of the essex witches haunt the train line which runs next the allotment?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Waterhouse

I don’t think there is a town or village in the entire country that didn’t have its own case of witchcraft. We had a case in our village in 1589. The records state, that one Joan Prentice freely admitted to the authority’s, that she regularly conversed with the Devil. She was also hung at Chelmsford. Very superstitious times

Also, I have already posted on here that one of the last witch trials ever held in England, happened because of an incident that took place in a pub that still stands, (although now closed sadly) opposite my house.

Some nights as I’m lying in bed, I can hear the old pub sign creaking in the wind.

 

[Tempest63]

Some nights as I’m lying in bed, I can hear the old pub sign creaking in the wind.

Old pub sign...or an arthritic knee...?

 

[Tempest63]

I don’t think there is a town or village in the entire country that didn’t have its own case of witchcraft. We had a case in our village in 1589. The records state, that one Joan Prentice freely admitted to the authority’s, that she regularly conversed with the Devil. She was also hung at Chelmsford. Very superstitious times

Also, I have already posted on here that one of the last witch trials ever held in England, happened because of an incident that took place in a pub that still stands, (although now closed sadly) opposite my house.

Some nights as I’m lying in bed, I can hear the old pub sign creaking in the wind.

Sible Hedingham?
Got a couple of friends on our shoot from there.

 

[Spookdaddy]

I don’t think there is a town or village in the entire country that didn’t have its own case of witchcraft. We had a case in our village in 1589. The records state, that one Joan Prentice freely admitted to the authority’s, that she regularly conversed with the Devil. She was also hung at Chelmsford. Very superstitious times...

This is true, but it's sobering to think that, overall - and despite the odd localised surge - the English experience was largely overshadowed by the utter hysteria which marked the witch craze in other parts of Europe. The English were, in many respects, relative amateurs when it came to looking for witches.

 

[Dick Turpin]

Sible Hedingham?
Got a couple of friends on our shoot from there.

One pub Sible I calls it, and because of the dammed virus soon to be no pub sible no doubt. Massive shame.

Go back 30 years and I would have called it 12 pub Sible. All doing a trade, all making money.

I should have moved to 2 pub Castle, which is the next village along.

 

[Sabresonic]

One pub Sible I calls it, and because of the dammed virus soon to be no pub sible no doubt. Massive shame.

Go back 30 years and I would have called it 12 pub Sible. All doing a trade, all making money.

I should have moved to 2 pub Castle, which is the next village along.

The way forward these days is to have your own Pub in your allotment or home and even brew you own vices and its cheap alongside controlled and safe environment and even make your own food and play your Spotify.

 

[IbisNibs]

The sensation is not scary as such but, like anytime you feel someone is watching you, you find it a bit weird.

Maybe a living person is actually there hiding in the underbrush watching you? Could be a curious, and bored, nature loving child spying on the adult world.