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Wild Park (Brighton)

James_H

And I like to roam the land
Joined
May 18, 2002
Messages
7,626
A lot of strange stuff has happened in/near Wild Park, IIRC? The Brighton 'babes in the wood' murders, that guy who cut up his dog in the shower, etc...
 
James_H2 said:
A lot of strange stuff has happened in/near Wild Park, IIRC? The Brighton 'babes in the wood' murders, that guy who cut up his dog in the shower, etc...

You remember correctly - I've never set foot in the place!
 
I used to live in Coldean, and had friends who lived in the estate opposite Wild Park. Once I got a taxi from there to somewhere else in Brighton, and the taxi driver started regaling me with various horror stories about the park. brr.
 
Reminds me of horror stories concerning Hyde Park in Leeds.
 
I used to live in Coldean, and had friends who lived in the estate opposite Wild Park. Once I got a taxi from there to somewhere else in Brighton, and the taxi driver started regaling me with various horror stories about the park. brr.

We'll need to hear them, please.
 
How about these?

Note: Hyde Park is the name of the neighbourhood, the park nearby is Woodhouse Moor.

Funnily enough, I have happy memories of the place, but a good friend of mine lived in the area for several years and I was always told that it was an excellent area in which to be abducted and/or raped if you were female. I don't have anything more than remembered snatches of anecdotes from his female friends and housemates about being followed and/or chased at night, but the data below indicate that things aren't really looking much better lately:

Screenshot 2019-08-10 at 00.17.49.png

Source and article:
https://thetab.com/uk/leeds/2018/09...-just-how-dangerous-hyde-park-really-is-43552

This map isn't that useful as it excludes the data for the surrounding areas that allow comparisons. The figures beneath, however, tell us that there have been 784 reported violent and sexual crimes in this single neighbourhood over the past eleven months:

Screenshot 2019-08-10 at 00.38.15.png
Screenshot 2019-08-10 at 00.37.58.png


Sixty-four violent and sexual crimes were recorded in the last recorded month alone.

Screenshot 2019-08-10 at 00.42.55.png

Sources:
https://www.police.uk/west-yorkshire/LDT_NW/crime/violent-crime/+oChGSU/
 
Note: Hyde Park is the name of the neighbourhood, the park nearby is Woodhouse Moor.

Funnily enough, I have happy memories of the place, but a good friend of mine lived in the area for several years and I was always told that it was an excellent area in which to be abducted and/or raped if you were female. I don't have anything more than remembered snatches of anecdotes from his female friends and housemates about being followed and/or chased at night, but the data below indicate that things aren't really looking much better lately:

View attachment 19489
Source and article:
https://thetab.com/uk/leeds/2018/09...-just-how-dangerous-hyde-park-really-is-43552

This map isn't that useful as it excludes the data for the surrounding areas that allow comparisons. The figures beneath, however, tell us that there have been 784 reported violent and sexual crimes in this single neighbourhood over the past eleven months:

View attachment 19491View attachment 19490

Sixty-four violent and sexual crimes were recorded in the last recorded month alone.

View attachment 19492
Sources:
https://www.police.uk/west-yorkshire/LDT_NW/crime/violent-crime/+oChGSU/
I find this astonishing!What i the arrest rate for these sexual violent crimes?
 
I just wondered if the arrest rate was low for there to be so many assaults taking place.
 
I find this astonishing!What i the arrest rate for these sexual violent crimes?

Sexual crimes and violent crimes, not “sexual violent” crimes.

Let’s also remember that, in today’s climate, “sexual crimes” are very broadly defined, even to include wolf whistling.

The initial source that Yithian quotes is The Tab, a nationwide student website, which suggests that this is an area extensively populated and used by students.

A disproportionately-high population of people of sexually-active age and inclination, plus cheap and freely-available intoxicants, when combined with a mindset that is encouraged to regard anything other than walking past someone on the other side of the street, eyes fixed forward while breathing unobtrusively through the nose, can have effects on reported crime numbers.

maximus otter
 
Sexual crimes and violent crimes, not “sexual violent” crimes.

Let’s also remember that, in today’s climate, “sexual crimes” are very broadly defined, even to include wolf whistling.

The initial source that Yithian quotes is The Tab, a nationwide student website, which suggests that this is an area extensively populated and used by students.

A disproportionately-high population of people of sexually-active age and inclination, plus cheap and freely-available intoxicants, when combined with a mindset that is encouraged to regard anything other than walking past someone on the other side of the street, eyes fixed forward while breathing unobtrusively through the nose, can have effects on reported crime numbers.

maximus otter
Apologies it should have been sexual/violent crimes
 
I'm not quite sure what you mean Maximus. I don't want to get into a big debate, but do you mean that sexual crimes that are being reported now would not have been considered offences in previous years?
 
I'm not quite sure what you mean Maximus. I don't want to get into a big debate, but do you mean that sexual crimes that are being reported now would not have been considered offences in previous years?

Flip that to read “Offences that are being reported now would not have been considered sexual crimes in previous years”, and my answer would be “Yes”.

maximus otter
 
Flip that to read “Offences that are being reported now would not have been considered sexual crimes in previous years”, and my answer would be “Yes”.

maximus otter
Don't be coy, Max. Which offences do you have in mind?

Also, am I misreading the apparent subtext to your posts, or are you indeed suggesting that you would prefer a return to the status quo ante?
 
Don't be coy, Max. Which offences do you have in mind?

Also, am I misreading the apparent subtext to your posts, or are you indeed suggesting that you would prefer a return to the status quo ante?

l linked in my post above to police dealing with wolf whistling. Another example that comes to mind is that of the woman recently interviewed by the police for referring on Twitter to a child born a boy, but who wanted to be a girl, as “a boy”.

Anther incident that l’ve seen in the media (and which l can’t be arsed to Google) involved police interviewing a man for looking at a female in a street in a way which “made her feel uncomfortable”.

All of this at a time when the police have been excoriated in the media for writing off 60% percent of real crime without even an attempt at an investigation.

If by status quo ante, you mean the police being an emergency service, and not the uniformed branch of the National Hand-Patting System, then it’s an emphatic “Yes!” from me.

maximus otter
 
Copied from the 'Something In The Woods' Thread:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/there-is-something-in-the-woods.69869/



The Stanmer estate years ago covered a large area and one corner of it was at Ditchling Beacon.
I have always found Stanmer Woods to have something odd about it that is hard to describe. I wouldn't call it creepy as such but the place never feels right. ...
Stanmer woods are odd. ...

A couple of miles away from Stanmer Woods is Wild Park (another wood rather than a 'park') - just on the very edges of Brighton. A loathsome place, and it comes with a bad history of the 'babes in the wood' murder back in the 1980s. I went to Wild Park with a friend back in autumn of 2006 on a grey autumn day. Loathsome is the only word to describe the atmosphere there. The air felt toxic and rotting. Maybe we had the thoughts of the murder in our minds - but I've visited other places with bad histories but nothing that had an atmosphere of poison that Wild Park had. The atmosphere caused a bit of panic between me and my friend. We were relieved to leave it. As we walked out of the trees my friend turned to me and said - and I still remember that tone of disbelief inhis vocie 'why would anyone want to come here?'
 
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A couple of miles away from Stanmer Woods is Wild Park (another wood rather than a 'park') - just on the very edges of Brighton. A loathsome place, and it comes with a bad history of the 'babes in the wood' murder back in the 1980s. I went to Wild Park with a friend back in autumn of 2006 on a grey autumn day. Loathsome is the only word to describe the atmosphere there. The air felt toxic and rotting. Maybe we had the thoughts of the murder in our minds - but I've visited other places with bad histories but nothing that had an atmosphere of poison that Wild Park had. The atmosphere caused a bit of panic between me and my friend. We were relieved to leave it. As we walked out of the trees my friend turned to me and said - and I still remember that tone of disbelief inhis vocie 'why would anyone want to come here?'
Wild Park. What a God forsaken place that is. The woods has a feel like something out of a Tolkien book.

I used to live in a part of Brighton (UK) next to Wild Park, which is on the southern edge of the South Downs, called Mouslecombe.

Named after a minor Saxon warlord called Mul. A combe is a Saxon word for a place that is enclosed on three sides by hills. Mul of the Combe. There's arguments in some circles as to the correct spelling. Mulscombe, Moulscombe, Moulsecombe, etc. Wild Park forms a combe, open at one end and enclosed by hills on three sides. Curiously enough, the Saxons would not settle in a combe that faced East, which Wild Park does.

Locally Wild Park had a reputation as a place to stay away from for no particular reason I ever heard of. The grassed flat area was fine but the woodlands surrounding it on three sides were more than just creepy, they were/are downright unfriendly and of course and as you mentioned, the 'Babes in the Woods' murders. There is still some steps leading to where the bodies of the young girls were found and even now, flowers still get placed there.

Once I looked after a neighbours dog while him and his wife went on holiday and as Wild Park was so near, I thought to walk the dog in the woods. On the grassed area the dog, a spaniel type mongrel, would run all over the place at speed hunting down smells and scents but as soon as we went in the woods the dog stayed right next to me. I kept looking around me because I just had a constant weird feeling of 'not alone'. I never saw anyone else, which is strange in itself, or saw anything odd or untoward. After the third or fourth day I decided to switch to Stanmer Park for dog walking although it meant s short drive. The dog seemed happier with that as well.

There used to be a cafe in the middle of the grassed area that would change hands almost yearly and stories of weird goings on there. I would eat there sometimes. Once, and this was during the nineties and at the time I thought it made up stories, the lady who ran the cafe said she wasn't renewing the lease when it runs out in the next few months. She said that odd things kept happening like coming in in the morning and a table would have moved several feet from where it was when she left the evening before or things just falling on the floor from a surface or shelf and stuff like that. At the time I thought it was just a reason to cover up a failing business or something like that. Now though, I'm not so sure.

At the time I didn't connect the dots. My 'Fortean moment' came in the early 2000's one evening when I saw what looked like loads of candle flames at the end of a friends rather large garden. I was sitting in his conservatory chatting away with him. I said to him about it and he said he and his wife and others see them from time to time and several times he'd walked down the garden but the lights go out and there's then nothing to see. I did the same and the lights went out and even though it was nearly pitch black apart from the lights of the house, there was nothing to see. It was after odd times of doing a search for similar, and I found some stories, that I came across this forum although at the time I didn't post anything about it for fear of ridicule as it wasn't mainstream ghost stuff, etc.

There's also been sightings of an ABC at Wild Park. Once by a group of dustman that got local publicity. They'd parked up near where the woods start to go uphill are and were having a fag break early in the morning at dawn. One of them said to the others something like 'what's that' and skirting around the edge of the woods was a large ABC. There have been numerous sightings over the years I've lived here including one by two park rangers in broad daylight in the woods but none in the last 5 or 10 years that I know of.

There's more about Wild Park. I think I've written too much already for one sitting.
 
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l linked in my post above to police dealing with wolf whistling. Another example that comes to mind is that of the woman recently interviewed by the police for referring on Twitter to a child born a boy, but who wanted to be a girl, as “a boy”.

Anther incident that l’ve seen in the media (and which l can’t be arsed to Google) involved police interviewing a man for looking at a female in a street in a way which “made her feel uncomfortable”.

All of this at a time when the police have been excoriated in the media for writing off 60% percent of real crime without even an attempt at an investigation.

If by status quo ante, you mean the police being an emergency service, and not the uniformed branch of the National Hand-Patting System, then it’s an emphatic “Yes!” from me.

maximus otter
Yes. I live in a small market town and yet if you look at just one month, it seems much worse than it really is;

https://www.police.uk/pu/your-area/west-mercia-police/whitchurch/?tab=crimemap
 
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