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I've transcribed the ghostly anecdote from the interview above along with the next couple in order to convey a sense of completeness and tone. Truly, though, she is a wonderful talker with a lovely voice.
The Oxford canal and locks looking north at Napton on the Hill. Three children are on the towpath. 1910s
Source: https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/catalogue_wow/napton-on-the-hill-oxford-canal-and-locks
There are either seven or nine locks at Napton, depending on what one counts:
https://www.waterwaysholidays.com/routes/nnapton.htm
Ooh, yes, we… [there was] a haunted lock. We didn’t know anything about it; we were sent.. hired out to—after a bit—off the Grand Union, where we went to Coventry to get our coal. We were hired out to Barlow’s in…erm.. to take coal to radiators, which was behind Worcester College in Oxford. Getting onto the river was lovely. And, erm, we came to a lock, we went through this lock, and then we tied-up, and it was—I don’t know why—we had the afternoon off, and we all disappeared. I went for a walk, and Virginia took her dog and went for a walk, and Margaret was further down the river—she was the other side of the lock—and I came back and decided to give— get tea for Virginia, and I heard her dog on the roof with its toenails clutch— scrabbling on the roof like dogs’ toenails do, and I thought ‘There’s her dog, Candy, I will put the kettle’, and she never turnerd up—neither did the dog. And when she did turn up, I made tea, and eventually we went to bed. And I heard this noise again. And I never knew it could happen, but the hairs on the back of my head stood on end. I didn’t know why. I said ‘That’s that noise I heard’. Not long after that, Margaret, clutching all her belongings, came tearing up the towpath and said ‘I’m not going to sleep down there. I can’t stand it. I-I-I don’t like the atmosphere. I’m going to sleep with you. So she plunked down on the floor.
Well, eventually, when we got back onto the Grand Union, we were met by Olga, who said ‘Where have you been?’ And we said we’d been to Napman [Napton?] Locks. Olga, of course said ‘Well they’re haunted’ And I said, ‘Oh, are they? What by?’ And being an Olga story, it was a bit mangled, but some man had… his boat had caught fire, I think, and he’d rushed for help and he’d scrabbled on the door of the lockeeper’s cottage and they wouldn’t let him in—they wouldn’t help him. And I think his horse had been burnt to death and that’s what we had heard (raps on table) on the top of the boat. But we knew nothing about this whatever, but I’ve never ever felt—I didn’t know it was possible—your hair stood on end—there—it stood right on end—this uncanny sort of scrabbling that was coming from… nowhere.
But, you know, we had a lot of fun one way or another. I was rather shocked once by the most fearful old man with a bloodshot eye, I sat next to in a pub. They were always begging me to go to the pub, but I really prefered lying on my back, reading my book. He looked at me and said ‘Was you born on the boat?’ [laughs] I see Mother saying [adopts genteel tone] ‘I have a great desire for Helen to be born as a wandering Jew.’ Anyhow, I said ‘No, actually I wasn’t’. But that, I think, was… we went to Apsley Mill. We took— Apsley Mill was a paper mill and we took coal to them. And we’d been coaling, and it was hot and dirty and we were dirty, and [the] Apsley people, whoever it was I fell in with, said we could use their sloosh-room when they’d all gone. And, erm, whether the others did or not, I don’t know, but I went there and stood in their stone sink and had a good old sloosh-down, and I did think it is a singular way to behave really, because I’m in this unknown factory and I don’t know whether anybody’s about or not, but I do feel so dirty and scrubby, and then I put on one if my trousseau nighties and scampered up the towpath in it and leapt onto my piece of wood, erm, but somehow nothing ever seemed real. I mean that, vaguely I said ‘What will Granny think of me, going on the towpath in my nightie—in the middle of the night? Well, I suppose it was about half-past ten or something. But everybody was doing odd things that you didn’t think anything about it. Well, you thought vaguely, but not much.
This may provide a general conception of the setting:The Oxford canal and locks looking north at Napton on the Hill. Three children are on the towpath. 1910s
Source: https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/catalogue_wow/napton-on-the-hill-oxford-canal-and-locks
There are either seven or nine locks at Napton, depending on what one counts:
https://www.waterwaysholidays.com/routes/nnapton.htm
