FURTHER spooky bulletin from the countryside fringes of Blackbrook -- by all acounts one of the most haunted places in the county -- comes from reader Pauline Picton.

Picking up on earlier ghostly accounts, she related a strange happening which occurred a couple of years ago.

She claims that she was walking her dog at

dusk near Blackbrook playing fields. "The dog was doing his usual lap of the field," says Pauline of Hargreaves Street, Parr, "when I looked right and saw a figure walking with its head down, as though looking for something on the ground."

The figure had mysteriously appeared in the gathering gloom; and was not there when Pauline released her dog from its lead. "I would say it was the outline of a woman," she adds, "and it went back and forth a few times."

Pauline immediately gathered her dog back on its lead . . . "and we were off that field as if the devils of hell were after us."

Pauline seems to be sensitive to mysteries from the unknown. "I have had other haunting experiences (no, I am not mad!) Sometimes I have been frightened; at other times I haven't."

But of the Blackbrook apparition she says: "I felt no fear. In fact, I felt sorry for it. It was just alarming the way it appeared from nowhere."

Pauline has tried many times to find out more history about the area where she experienced that spooky encounter, but without much luck.

PERHAPS some other reader may be able to oblige?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.