Hampshire and Isle of Wight Ghost Tales

by Michael O'Leary

  10

  MARROWBONES HILL

  When walking I can live in the present – it’s when the worries and structure of my life disappear and I can just appreciate my surroundings; the different sound the wind makes in deciduous forest or coniferous forest, the patterns of sunlight through trees and the changes in temperature when the sun disappears behind clouds, the smells – the fresh smell after rain, or the smells of a dry, hot day. Of course consumer culture will even try to package this and sell it to us as ‘mindfulness training’ or some such tripe, but there is really something ancient about putting one foot before the other, and being open to one’s surroundings – something that can put the detritus of living into perspective.

  Anyway, I was on a long walk in the New Forest. I’d gone all the way from Winding Stonard, across Shifters Bottom, to Milkham Bottom, through the woods of Ellingham to the Great Bottom, then turned south again, past the pillow mounds of Big Whitemoor Bottom until I reached the houses around Linford. It was evening as I passed a farm and I began to think that I needed to pitch my tent somewhere. I thought I’d walk along the ascending valley of Linwood Bottom, through the trees, and up to Marrowbones Hill. I’d camp out there, and then the next day I’d wander into the metropolis of Ringwood along squelchy Foulford Bottom. It was really just the name that made Marrowbones Hill my destination, but it did seem such a wonderful name, and at least it wasn’t a bottom.

  As I headed down the farm track and into the woods, I got the feeling that someone was watching me – I turned round and saw, standing outside the farmhouse, hands on hips, a figure. But it was just a little too distant, and a little bit too dark, for me to make out the features. I didn’t like the feeling that I was being watched, but I carried on walking.

  As I entered woodland I could see no one behind me, but I had the sense of being followed, and that responsiveness to my surroundings, that ‘in the moment’ feeling, was gone – all I felt was the presence of someone, or something, behind me.

  I left the woodland and found myself heading up to Marrowbones Hill. Up on the hill, all now illuminated by the light of the moon, there was a great spreading oak, surrounded, in a perfect circle, by holly trees. The hollies looked for all the world like dancers who had been suddenly petrified, like in one of those folk stories where villagers are turned to stone or trees for dancing on the Sabbath. Some of the hollies were locked together in embrace, making it look like the dance had been somewhat bacchanalian. I entered the circle, and saw, within, a strange oblong shape of livid green moss – livid even in the moonlight – all surrounded by elder bushes. It looked softer than the rest of the ferny, brackeny heathland, so I thought, ‘That’ll do, I’ll pitch my tent there.’ I stepped into the oblong, but as soon as I did so, everything went freezing, freezing cold. It was late, there was a clear, cold sky, it was October so it was cold, but this was different, this was a cold that came from inside me, from in my bones – this was a cold that told me something was wrong. I stepped out of the oblong – and found myself caught in a beam of light.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said a man, invisible behind the glare of his flashlight. ‘You aren’t allowed to camp in the Forest.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ I replied, adopting a resentful and rather unconvincing bravado.

  ‘Why should the Forest be damaged by people being irresponsible?’ said the man, lowering his flashlight.

  ‘Who’s damaging the Forest?’

  ‘Camping in it can cause damage.’

  ‘I never said I was camping,’ I said, rather disingenuously, ‘and have you really followed me all the way up from Linford?’

  ‘I have,’ he said, ‘but not for my benefit, for yours – I know Marrowbones Hill well enough.’

  Well, now I was intrigued, and what with that, and the unnerving change of temperature within the strange oblong, I sensed a story.

  ‘Look,’ said the man, ‘if you like you can come down to the farmhouse and pitch your tent in the front garden. Then you can use the bathroom and toilet when you need to.’

  I was surprised by this show of hospitality that seemed to follow hostility, and I felt rather glad to get away from Marrowbones Hill, so I followed him back the way I’d already come.

  We reached the farmhouse near Linford, a prosperous-looking place, and he invited me in for a cup of tea. I met his wife, who was very pleasant and hospitable, and we sat down and talked about the Forest for a while. His wife said that she was going to have a glass of wine before going to bed, so they opened a very nice bottle of red, and got out the cheese and biscuits. After she’d gone to bed, the farmer opened another bottle, and our conversation became rather more lucid. It was actually after he’d opened the bottle of malt whisky that I asked him why he’d said that it was for my benefit that I shouldn’t camp on Marrowbones Hill.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m a businessman – I’m not some “oo arr farmer” with a pint of cider; I’m part of an agricultural conglomerate, we have board meetings in London. If my business associates knew that I believed in such things, they’d never take me seriously again – so if I tell you, you’ve got to promise never to tell anyone else.’

  So I promised.

  And that should be the end of the story.

  Because I promised.

  And if I was to put it into a book, to be available to the public – that would be terrible.

  But then you should never tell a secret to a storyteller, because they go blah blah blah, and I’m sure none of his important business associates would bother reading a daft little ghost book.

  So here goes:

  ‘When I was a boy,’ the farmer said, ‘I lived on this farm; it’s been in the family for generations. Everyone said to me, “Whatever you do, nipper, don’t go and play up on Marrowbones Hill, because it’s a bad place.” Well, that’s a fatal thing to say to a child, it just makes you more curious; so I was always up there, poking around to see what I could find. That strange oblong shape of green moss was there in the 1950s, and one time I was poking around in it and found a bit of old stick. I scraped the soil off with my thumbs, and there were cut marks on the end. It was a whistle. I blew on it, and I had that feeling – you know – “like someone’s walked across my grave”. But I took it, like you would, and off with me down the hill. Now, as I came out of the Forest into Linford, I passed the cottage where Jack and Mary Bottlesford lived – it’s where someone’s garage is now, you’ll have seen that the new houses have got garages that are as big as the old cottages. Well, old Jack, he’d worked on this farm all his life, and he was leaning on the gate, smoking his old pipe.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” Jack said to me.

  “Oh, it’s nothing, only an old whistle.”

  “A what? Where did you get that? Not up on … Marrowbones Hill?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen nipper, if I were you I’d take it home, put it on the fire, and burn it. BURN IT – TILL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT BUT ASHES.” He was shouting now.

  “All right, all right.”

  So I took it home, but I didn’t burn it, of course I didn’t. I put it in my treasure box, an old Oxo cube tin that I kept all my best things in, and put it under the bed. Then I forgot all about it, until the time that I woke up at midnight. It was midsummer’s night, and the window was wide open, and you could see the dark forest leading up to Marrowbones Hill, with a big, full moon up in the sky. I woke up, because I thought I heard something, almost in the back of my mind, but coming from the hill. A whistle. Or maybe it was the cry of a vixen, or the screech of an owl. But I reached under the bed, I didn’t know why, got hold of the treasure box, and took out the whistle. I blew it out of the window. There came a reply from the hill. Again I don’t know why, but I got out of bed, tiptoed out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind me ever so quiet, so I didn’t wake my mum and dad, crept down the stairs, avoiding that creaky one in the middle, put my coat on over my pyjamas, pulled on my wellies, then off and out the
front door. As I walked along the lane, towards Linford Bottom, the whistles got louder and louder, till they sounded more like screams than whistles, and I could almost see them, like shadows around me.

  Well, I now know that when I went past Jack and Mary Bottlesford’s house, Jack and Mary were lying in bed; Jack would have been snoring away, but Mary was awake.

  “Yere, Jack, I heard something.” She shook him awake.

  “What you talking about, woman?”

  “I heard footsteps.”

  “Don’t be daft, who’d be walking past yere, this time of night?”

  “Sounded like child’s footsteps.”

  Then, from Marrowbones Hill, there came the sound of a distant whistle.

  “Oh my Lord, Mary, I knows what it is.”

  Jack jumped out of bed, quicker than he’d done in years, pulled on his coat and wellies, and went off up the hill after me.

  But by that time I’d got to the top of the hill. Well, I stepped into that weird oblong, that always felt like it was some kind of containing space, and everything went freezing cold; you know about that. But as I did so, a cloud drifted in front of the face of the moon, and everything went pitch black, pitch dark. I was crouched there, sort of frozen to the spot, and there was something dark – darker than the darkness itself – squelching, sliding, slithering towards me. Just then, the cloud drifted away from the face of the moon, and everything lit up; just as old Jack got up to the top of the hill.

  “It’s alright, nipper, it’s alright,” he called out, “I’ve got you now,” and he picked me up and took me back down the hill, back to Mary. Well, even though it was a hot summer’s night, Jack lit a fire in the grate, threw the whistle in, and burned it; burned it till there was nothing left but ashes.

  “I told you, nipper,” said Jack, “I told you not to go up there. How many times did I tell you?”

  Well, you can imagine me, sitting there clutching my mug of cocoa.’

  ‘Yes, but what was it? What is up there?’ I said.

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’

  And now this felt a bit like one of those Russian dolls – there were stories within stories within stories.

  The farmer continued:

  ‘Jack said to me: “It was in the time of my grandfather …”

  Now this was the 1950s, Jack was an old man, so the time of his grandfather was back in Victorian times.

  “There was this old woman, and she lived up on Marrowbones Hill, like they say old Brusher Mills did, in some sort of a bivouac of branches and twigs. She’d gone half daft – doolally – and she used to walk round and round Marrowbones Hill babbling stuff like “I be the guardian of this hill”. Well, folk said she was a witch, but the minister at Linford said, “Don’t be superstitious, picking on a poor old woman”.

  Anyhow, she died, just of old age, natural causes, a hard life. But after she died, the villagers from Linford and Poulner went up there and burnt her old bivouac down. Strange how folk are, because Victorian times, if you look at generations, really isn’t that long ago. Anyways, all these bits and pieces fell out of the bivvy, things made out of wood and brambles, figures and creatures and wotnot – and I suppose that whistle, though they never found that – you found it, all those years later.’

  Well, there I was, sitting at the farmer’s table, guzzling his whisky, and listening, not just to his story, but to him repeating Jack Bottleford’s story, and suddenly I felt a sense of disappointment. You see, I think I’d agree with the minister; there’s this old woman, living all alone with the elements, and maybe she has dementia – and the people are getting on at her, calling her a witch. It’s picking on someone who’s vulnerable; it’s bullying.

  ‘So that’s it,’ I said, ‘that’s the story – there was a wicked witch living up on Marrowbones Hill.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the farmer, ‘the wicked witch of Marrowbones Hill. Would you like another glass of whisky?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  But as I held out my glass to the proffered bottle, I knew there was more – sometimes you just know.

  ‘All right,’ said the farmer, ‘there is a little bit more, but I never told anyone this, I never even told Jack and Mary Bottlesford, so if I tell you this, you’ll really have to promise never to tell anyone else.’

  But it’s all right; I had my fingers crossed under the table. He went on:

  ‘Remember I said I was at the top of the hill, in that oblong shape of moss, and that there was something dark coming towards me? Well – before the cloud cleared away from the moon, before Jack got up there, something else happened. Suddenly all the fear just slipped away from me, I wasn’t frightened any more, and what had been dark was light, and I seemed to see inside the hill. There were people there, but they weren’t people, they were the “other” people – and time was different, what might have been only a night time to them, could be a hundred years to us – and there was music coming from inside the hill – only I didn’t really hear it with my ears, more with my mind. The nearest I can come to describing it is to say it was like flutes and harps and pipes. And I was going to step into the hill – and if I’d done so, I seriously believe I would have become another statistic, a missing child. But it was then that the cloud cleared from the moon, and old Jack got up to the top of the hill, and said, ‘It’s alright nipper, it’s alright’. And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Jack went up there, because I’ve got a good life; I’ve got my family, and I’ve got the farm. But sometimes, I’m ploughing the field down below the hill, at the edge of the woods, and I think to myself, “What if? What if I had?”’

  Well, there you are, that’s the story that the farmer told me as I sat at his table knocking back his whisky – and I realised that this was a folk tale, a tale of the other land under the hill. But this wasn’t the west of Ireland, or the highlands of Scotland – this was Marrowbones Hill, on the edge of the New Forest. And I tell you what – I never will pitch my tent there.

  11

  DEADWOMAN’S GATE

  Hyden Wood is full of contrasts, and it’s full of the physical evidence of its own history – fragments of buried stories. There can be a raised earth bank, and then suddenly, almost buried in the soil, there’s a brick-built alcove, suggesting something of what went before, something built within the ground. There’s humps and tummocks – evidence of something: a boundary? – a marker? – a habitation? – certainly a story.

  And the contrasts? There most definitely are the ‘deep, dark woods’ – that alliterated phrase that makes a child listening to a story stop, and fearfully imagine, as they empathise with Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel, being pixie led and lost in the forest.

  But then the wanderer can emerge from the deep, dark woods suddenly into sunlight, and find a view that stretches across the southern slopes of the Downs to Portsdown Hill, then over the top of a hidden Portsmouth, to the cliffs of Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. Given that the Solent is as hidden as Portsmouth, those cliffs seem to be part of the mainland – and it is almost surreal to see tall cliffs in the gentle Hampshire landscape.

  There is one part of Hyden Wood, though, where even on a still day a disturbing breeze seems to flutter and whisper, and where, even when the sun shines through the trees, creating dancing patterns of light, the air feels cold. It may be that in the evening you wander into the woods, with the warmth of a summer’s day still hanging in the air; you might be feeling relaxed, pleasant, with the prospect of a summer evening pint ahead – but then you pass through Deadwoman’s Gate. That’s when the temperature drops, and that’s when an oppression is liable to come and squat on top of your summery mood.

  The stories say that a hand can burst out of the ground and grab your ankle, and should your feet stick in slummocky mud, you might well think, for a second, that the Dead Woman has got you. It is reputed to be a suicide grave – examples of which are dotted around Britain. Those folk who took their own lives, driven by a misery stronger
than fear of any Biblical warning, and who were buried in lonely places, far from consecrated ground. There they are to be feared and ignored – so when it happens that a suicide grave, such as that of Kitty Jay on Dartmoor, mysteriously receives flowers, it is cheering to feel that the lonely and despairing, even after death, might get some degree of sympathy and recognition. These lonely graves are often at crossroads, and Deadwoman’s Gate is just off the point where a forest track crosses what is now a tarmacked road.

  It would seem that frequently the bodies that lie in these graves are the bodies of young women who became pregnant outside marriage, and their babies, whether born or unborn, have received no acknowledgement from the father. Young women faced with this stigma also faced the practical difficulties of being an unmarried mother, and the unwanted attentions of men who now put them into the smirking category of ‘available’.

  The story of Deadwoman’s Gate, however, is a complicated and terrible variation on this theme. The suicide wasn’t the unmarried mother, it was her grown-up daughter.

  It was Saul the fiddler who fathered the daughter. In reality his name was Micheál, which to put an Irish name phonetically into English, is pronounced Me-Haul, but to English ears that sounded outlandish, so he became known as Saul, because it rhymed with ‘Haul’. Saul was a peddler, but he also scraped out a rattling jig on the fiddle; that, plus his long, black curling hair, his easy charm, and his rather romantic outsider status, enabled him to cut a swathe through those inexperienced country girls, whilst all the while revelling in his own power. It was only one coupling that lead to the pregnancy, and Saul was gone – he ended his life older and weaker, the charm corroded away through a combination of alcohol and rough living after he’d taken up with one-legged old Fortune Dancey from Pewsey. It was she that pushed him into a Wiltshire ditch after a drunken argument, where he ended his life face down in his own vomit.