The Ditchling Beacon Walker

[catseye]

And yet it was done. I shall never forget trying to cross Raybarrow Pool on Dartmoor back in the mists of time (1991), the easternmost boundary stone on the map below was largely surrounded by bog, I approached from the east and just about reached the stone, a short distance later I put my foot down and the whole surface quaked, sending slow ripples out into the distance, at which point I gave up and turned south. The boundary crosses trackless swamp to the east and southwest, even more so after it turns west at the next stone. In this case, the boundary appears to be between Sticklepath (or possibly South Tawton) and Throwleigh parishes.

View attachment 58273

I guess that bogs come and bogs go, depending on conditions...

 

[catseye]

Nice wikipedia article about R&F. It's usually described as a reversed S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridge_and_furrow

Stunning photo of a Gloucestershire example showing the different directions of ploughing. Depending on inheritance practices, a holding could be a single land, a group of adjacent lands or a number of single lands scattered over the system. Boundaries are important, for simple survival (is there enough food?) and also psychologically. Edit to add the source! https://historic-liverpool.co.uk/ridge-and-furrow-west-derby/

View attachment 58267

I live near Middleton, North Yorkshire, where the fields still 'bend' as they were ploughed with ox teams.

 

[maximus otter]

I live near Middleton, North Yorkshire, where the fields still 'bend' as they were ploughed with ox teams.

People stare blankly when one mentions that an acre is 4,840 square yards. That’s because:

a) Mediaeval fields were often 220 yards - ⅛ mile - long, and;

b) It takes 22 yards to turn an ox-drawn plough.

22 x 220 = 4,840

Simple, human, relateable.

maximus otter

 

[Coal]

People stare blankly when one mentions that an acre is 4,840 square yards. That’s because:

a) Mediaeval fields were often 220 yards - ⅛ mile - long, and;

b) It takes 22 yards to turn an ox-drawn plough.

22 x 220 = 4,840

Simple, human, relateable.

maximus otter

Probs why a cricket pitch ended up being 22 yards.

 

[maximus otter]

Probs why a cricket pitch ended up being 22 yards.

No, that’s from the use of a surveyor’s chain, which was 22 yards long, giving us the chain as a unit of measurement.

maximus otter

 

[Mikefule]

People stare blankly when one mentions that an acre is 4,840 square yards. That’s because:

a) Mediaeval fields were often 220 yards - ⅛ mile - long, and;

b) It takes 22 yards to turn an ox-drawn plough.

22 x 220 = 4,840

Simple, human, relateable.

maximus otter

Probs why a cricket pitch ended up being 22 yards.

No, that’s from the use of a surveyor’s chain, which was 22 yards long, giving us the chain as a unit of measurement.

maximus otter

All these are linked. A furlong ("furrow long") was 1/8 mile or 220 yards. This was notionally the standard length of a furrow.

A surveyor's chain was used for measuring land and was 1/10 of a furlong.

An acre is an area equivalent to 1 furlong x 1 chain.

An acre was notionally the area of land that a single man and ox plough could plough in a day.

A surveyor's chain was then a useful way of measuring a standard cricket pitch.

 

[Quercus]

@Quercus I hope you're well. Did you ever post the events of summer 1999 on here anywhere?

Hey Floyd - thanks for commenting, I'm doing alright here.

No, I never did post what happened that night, nor have I even fully succeeded in writing it out... I tried to do so, several times, but each time something occurred that caused me to lose the text. Hard drive failure (terminal and irrecoverable) on my laptop; the theft of my notebook in a public place; handwritten notes that then went missing and remain unfound.

All totally coincidental, of course, but enough to cause me a degree of disquiet as - utterly implausible though it seems - I started to wonder if somehow I was being gently persuaded by the universe not to go public with my experience. And a vague concern that the persuasion might become increasingly less gentle, should I persist in trying to do so.

So, for now, it remains untold.

 

[SimonBurchell]

Hey Floyd - thanks for commenting, I'm doing alright here.

No, I never did post what happened that night, nor have I even fully succeeded in writing it out... I tried to do so, several times, but each time something occurred that caused me to lose the text. Hard drive failure (terminal and irrecoverable) on my laptop; the theft of my notebook in a public place; handwritten notes that then went missing and remain unfound.

All totally coincidental, of course, but enough to cause me a degree of disquiet as - utterly implausible though it seems - I started to wonder if somehow I was being gently persuaded by the universe not to go public with my experience. And a vague concern that the persuasion might become increasingly less gentle, should I persist in trying to do so.

So, for now, it remains untold.

 

[Floyd]

Hey Floyd - thanks for commenting, I'm doing alright here.

No, I never did post what happened that night, nor have I even fully succeeded in writing it out... I tried to do so, several times, but each time something occurred that caused me to lose the text. Hard drive failure (terminal and irrecoverable) on my laptop; the theft of my notebook in a public place; handwritten notes that then went missing and remain unfound.

All totally coincidental, of course, but enough to cause me a degree of disquiet as - utterly implausible though it seems - I started to wonder if somehow I was being gently persuaded by the universe not to go public with my experience. And a vague concern that the persuasion might become increasingly less gentle, should I persist in trying to do so.

So, for now, it remains untold.

Right. Fair enough, that's quite understandable!

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Hey Floyd - thanks for commenting, I'm doing alright here.

No, I never did post what happened that night, nor have I even fully succeeded in writing it out... I tried to do so, several times, but each time something occurred that caused me to lose the text. Hard drive failure (terminal and irrecoverable) on my laptop; the theft of my notebook in a public place; handwritten notes that then went missing and remain unfound.

All totally coincidental, of course, but enough to cause me a degree of disquiet as - utterly implausible though it seems - I started to wonder if somehow I was being gently persuaded by the universe not to go public with my experience. And a vague concern that the persuasion might become increasingly less gentle, should I persist in trying to do so.

So, for now, it remains untold.

Author Jon Downes of the CFZ reported similar bad luck and two computers dying as he was researching the Owlman of Cornwall for his book ’The Owlman and Others’

 

[IbisNibs]

I started to wonder if somehow I was being gently persuaded by the universe not to go public with my experience.

Or you could tell your story to someone else, who could then relate it as a FOAF story—which of course, would mean the universe would have to kill you, and the person you confided to would be enmeshed in Hitchcockian style true life thriller.

 

[Floyd]

Or you could tell your story to someone else, who could then relate it as a FOAF story—which of course, would mean the universe would have to kill you, and the person you confided to would be enmeshed in Hitchcockian style true life thriller.

I was thinking maybe like when someone wants to see a top secret document and the guy with the document says ''I can't allow you to see it, but I'm just going to leave it here on the desk while I go out of the room for 5 minutes''....

 

[Quercus]

Ok, so - I wrote it out, after a fashion.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/galway-bay-lights-1999.69848/

If no-one ever hears from me again, then you'll know why...

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Well then, first thread... and I thought I'd start with the tale that brought me back to this forum, in a roundabout way.

Story first - and then what came after, in separate posts in case anyone wishes to quote certain sections back at me. Apologies for the length, future posts shouldn't be so episodic!


One night, in either December 2004 or January 2005, I was driving back towards Brighton from my workplace near Lindfield in Sussex, around 11pm.

I worked in a care home, and the hours were unsociable. It was a very cold night, the temperature hovering a little over freezing point – I’d had to use de-icer and scrape the frost from the windscreen after finishing my shift – and there was a stiff wind blowing. The journey was a familiar one, along the B2112 from Wivelsfield through the village of Ditchling, before a left turn onto Beacon Road took me up the very steep, winding road which topped out at Ditchling Beacon, the tallest peak on the Sussex Downs.

I'd dropped off some other staff members in Haywards Heath, Wivelsfield and Burgess Hill, so I was alone by the time I passed through the quiet village of Ditchling and onto Beacon Road. As the streetlights came to an end, I flicked on my main beams and shifted into low gear to negotiate the tight bends which snaked their way up the hillside, trees reaching in from either side of the road to meet in the middle. There was no other traffic. The car was nice and warm after half an hour with the heater on, though.

As I made my way around the fourth turn on the ascent, about two-thirds of the way up the incline, my headlamps illuminated the back of a tall male figure, striding up the right hand side of the road and travelling in the same direction as me. High leather boots, a long, dark coat and a wide-brimmed hat were clearly picked out in the Ford Escort’s halogen main beams. My immediate impulse was to avoid hitting the unexpected walker, who I assumed to be a farmer, perhaps making his way home from one of the pubs in the village. High earthen banks and dense trees lined both sides of the road, and there was nowhere for a pedestrian to move out of the way of traffic.

As I steered around the walking figure, who didn’t turn round or acknowledge my presence in any way, it then occurred to me that maybe something was wrong. Maybe his car had broken down in the village, and he could use a lift up such a punishingly steep hill on such a cold, wild night. I eased off the throttle, coming to a halt halfway between the two bends with my foot on the brake pedal, and lowered the driver’s window. The chill night air rushed into the cabin. I could clearly see the figure reflected in my door mirror, still striding up the side of the road towards me, and brightly lit by the Escort's brake lights. As he drew closer I cleared my throat and prepared to ask him if he needed a lift up the hill – and then I noticed one tiny detail.

The figure walking towards me, reflected in the mirror, had no face.

The hat, the coat, and even a scarf knotted at the throat were plain to see in the bright red brakelights - but where the face should have been was nothing but darkness. It wasn't in shadow from the hat, as the brakes were low down and lit the figure completely. It wasn’t a balaclava or any other face covering, as that would at least have shown an outline. Above the scarf and below the hat, there was simply nothing at all. Only a void.

My brain scrabbled to process what I was seeing, and everything seemed to slow down. I knew what I saw, reflected there before me, and equally I knew I couldn't really be seeing it. My mind seemed to be locked in a loop, unable to work out what was unfolding and hence unable to take action. And all the while the figure was drawing closer, step by step by step.

Suddenly, as if surfacing from beneath water, a jolt of adrenaline hit me and I grabbed at the gearstick, stomped on the accelerator and pulled away, fast.

With a primeval fear prickling at me, I ragged the car around the next bend and onward towards the top of the peak, leaving the walker behind in the darkness beneath the clusters of bare branches. I wound the driver's window back up, trying as I did so to rationalise what I'd seen, and attempting to second-guess whatever optical illusion had made me think that the long-coated traveller was faceless.

But I couldn't come up with anything. The image of the figure, with every crease of the coat and twist of the scarf picked out by the high-intensity brakelights, was burned into my memory – and the awful, indisputable nothingness up top.

Cresting the top of the hill, I hammered along the open road, twisting across the open moorland towards Brighton and home, my mind still churning. Then it struck me that there was nowhere up here for anyone to be walking to - there were no houses, or barns, or anything at all up here. Just miles and miles of wind-blasted heathland and stunted trees across the Downs, until the road met up with the A27 near Coldean. I saw no other cars, either moving or parked, all the way along. And, even with the heater turned up full blast, the inside of my car felt like an industrial freezer all the way home to Hove.

I didn't sleep well that night, even with several hot water bottles in the bed with me. I just couldn't seem to get that chill out of me.

After that, I started going the long way home, along the main A23. There may have been a perfectly plausible explanation for what I saw, or thought I saw – but I didn’t fancy trying my luck with the walker on the Beacon Road again.



So, that's what happened to me.

Another faceless figure by the side of a road, this from Acle, Norfolk in 2002:

"A figure wearing green with no face stood on the side of the road"

More details at:

https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/recent/index.php

 

[Nick Smith]

Not sure about the Ditchling Beacon ghost (which I enjoyed greatly btw OP) but I'm a Brighton boy myself, currently in Essex, and remember that there was a character who was well known in the Ditchling Road / Coldean Lane / Old boat corner, area who could be seen at all times of the day and in all weathers marching double time dressed in a green snorkel parka done right up to the top, wearing gloves, military trousers, heavy boots and carrying a full backpack. In always thought he was some sort of extreme fitness fanatic but, on reflection, was more likely mentally ill. His routine was relentless. I'd see him in the early hours of in the middle of the day or night going back and forth following the same route. In boiling summer heat or winter snow...always dressed the same, hood up, face hidden just...marching.

Very odd.

 

[Floyd]

If no-one ever hears from me again, then you'll know why...

Well, you've not been seen on the forum since a month after this post so...........???

 

[Robbrent]

Author Jon Downes of the CFZ reported similar bad luck and two computers dying as he was researching the Owlman of Cornwall for his book ’The Owlman and Others’

It's surprising the amount of bad luck that befalls Paranormal researchers, perhaps it's a warning to stay away from things that don't concern you (which kind of says there is a hidden purpose to it all) or it's a test of faith

 

[escargot]

Hey Floyd - thanks for commenting, I'm doing alright here.

No, I never did post what happened that night, nor have I even fully succeeded in writing it out... I tried to do so, several times, but each time something occurred that caused me to lose the text. Hard drive failure (terminal and irrecoverable) on my laptop; the theft of my notebook in a public place; handwritten notes that then went missing and remain unfound.

All totally coincidental, of course, but enough to cause me a degree of disquiet as - utterly implausible though it seems - I started to wonder if somehow I was being gently persuaded by the universe not to go public with my experience. And a vague concern that the persuasion might become increasingly less gentle, should I persist in trying to do so.

So, for now, it remains untold.

Reminds me of when an apport, a small brass button, fell onto my shoulder on a replica Spanish galleon in Barcelona harbour.

Escette and I had tried to take photos of the interior of the ship but our several cameras and phones wouldn't co-operate. They'd take the photo, show it on the screen and then disappear with an 'ERROR' message.

When we left the ship everything worked perfectly again although no below-decks photos remained.

 

[Eponastill]

Reminds me of when an apport, a small brass button, fell onto my shoulder on a replica Spanish galleon in Barcelona harbour.

A haunted replica galleon? I suppose there can't be many real galleons left to haunt. I guess that rather knocks on the head ideas about ghostliness being in the fabric of the building?!

 

[SimonBurchell]

A haunted replica galleon? I suppose there can't be many real galleons left to haunt. I guess that rather knocks on the head ideas about ghostliness being in the fabric of the building?!

Well, you just don't know what might have happened on the replica. People can drop dead (or be murdered) just about anywhere.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Reminds me of when an apport, a small brass button, fell onto my shoulder on a replica Spanish galleon in Barcelona harbour.

Escette and I had tried to take photos of the interior of the ship but our several cameras and phones wouldn't co-operate. They'd take the photo, show it on the screen and then disappear with an 'ERROR' message.

When we left the ship everything worked perfectly again although no below-decks photos remained.

Was it a replica of Columbus' Santa Maria?
There have been at least two of those, with the original one being created under the Franco regime for Spanish nationalist propaganda purposes. It was fire-bombed by Catalan separatists. The replacement, which was there some 8 or 9 years ago when we visited, was doing tourist day trips, but looked horrendously overcrowded, so we decided against it.

 

[Eponastill]

Well, you just don't know what might have happened on the replica. People can drop dead (or be murdered) just about anywhere.

Very true. And besides, what about all those poltergeist-ridden newly-built council houses. Gah we don't understand anything do we If these things have a choice then going for a replica galleon would seem a fun decision.

 

[escargot]

A haunted replica galleon? I suppose there can't be many real galleons left to haunt. I guess that rather knocks on the head ideas about ghostliness being in the fabric of the building?!

This one is owned by the Spanish Navy and is in regular use for training. I looked it up and believe it was built in the early 1920s for that purpose.

We were lucky to be able to visit it and jumped at the chance.

There are loads of small seagoing sailing ships around which are kept busy. The experience of, I dunno, trimming sails and being sick together is a fine team building exercise.

There is a fuller description of our delightful hour there elsewhere on the board.
I cannot explain why our cameras and phones wouldn't work onboard.
The button is treasured.