Locations featured in The Haunting of Stoke Water, # 3 in the Psychic Sisters series

 

A strange evil lurks within the old building; to some it appears an innocent  child 

but Queenie and Sybil see the truth, that it is pure evil.

They soon realise that it has a sinister motive in befriending the child: to steal her soul.

Using their occult knowledge they begin to uncover the truth  surrounding the old Victorian building

 and the significance of a murder that happened 150 years earlier.

In the book Queenie and Sybil visit the church at Stoke Abbott 

in an effort to track down the grave of the murdered girl.

This fresh water spring runs directly out of the hillside and can be drunk, hence the cup. Many years ago when I was just a nipper the water became polluted so was not safe to use. In times past the villagers would gather here at the lions head to collect their water for the day.

The yew in the churchyard where the ghosts of the children appear.

( Visited the graveyard just last week and the iron railings have been removed)

Gerrards Hill Stoke Abbott. The murderer runs from the scene of the crime up Anchor Lane, which we show on the video, ( link below) across Waddon Hill,  a Roman  hill fort, ( it has been more than half a century since I played as a child amongst the ramparts  and ditches on the hill)

and across to Gerrards Hill, down Wood Lane and back to Stoke Water House.

Wood lane, incredibly steep sided. Many years ago we kept cattle in the field on the right. The livestock was checked every day but on one occasion we had one cow go missing. It was found eventually; it had fallen off the edge and was suspended in one of the large trees growing from the side of the lane. Needless to say the animal was dead so that just shows how steep the sides were.

An Old photo of the workhouse; a grim place!

It is here that the hauntings take place.

See below for the link to the book on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07BBWB41J

And here...drum roll! is the link for our video!

https://youtu.be/jVMQXayodRM

.

The Three Spinsters Stone

The name drives from the local  legend of three spinsters living nearby, not spinsters 

as we know the term but 'spinsters' in the woollen sense...wool spinners. 

The tale goes that one morning the three women set out to take their baskets of spun 

wool to the local wool trader and stopped for a rest in the lane bordering 

the 'Three Stones' field. 

For some reason they decided to re-erect the three granite slabs then replace 

the huge capstone on top, hence the name Spinsters Rock!

Although in 1848 Samuel Rowe suggested the theory that the Three Spinsters is a link 

with the three Fatal Sisters, Urd, Verdani and Skuld of Norse Mythology  who lived 

at the base of Yggdrasil, The World Tree. 

They were said to weave the destiny of the world and would visit any newborn to 

determine its destiny.

The Spinsters Rock is a Neolithic chambered tomb, kown as a Dolmen or Cromlech, found on Dartmoor near Drewsteighton and  is the best surviving example in the county.

The word Dolmen is derived from the Celtic words daul, a table, and maen, a stone.

Originally covered by a mound of earth or stones. The capstone alone wighs 16 tons and is 3.65m long by 2.7 wide.

The tomb collapsed in 1862 after the surrounding field was ploughed during a very wet season prior to planting a crop of winter wheat, yes they had bad weather then as well! In fact the summer of 1860 and 1862 was recorded as being  the wettest and coldest across England since their records began.

There is divided opinion who was responsible for its restoration either local Vicar Rev W. Ponsford or a Mrs Bragg of Fulford.

We visited this site a few weeks ago , it quite an impressive Dolmen and the picture does not do it justice. It was being guarded by three malevolent sheep and later that night a fierce storm blew up, the wind howled and shrieked and I could hear 'fell voices on the wind' so I think we might have disturbed the three spinsters in some way!

Queenies Beresford's

Book of 

very useful 

Spells

Queenie is about to write her own useful spell book, nagged by her sister Sybil 

who thinks she should do it before Queenie gets too old. 

This will include spells to defeat dark souls, different recipes for tea ..of course, and 

anything  else Queenie thinks might be interesting and useful for witches  and mortals.

Hopefully she will be able to concentrate long enough to get it finished sometime soon...other adventures permitting!

Sea Maidens at Durdle Door

Lulworth Castle, the magnificent home 
of the Weld family, was destroyed by fire in 1929 and amidst the tales of woe from the inhabitants came another strange 
story, that all the  maidservants had mysteriously disappeared. 

They were never seen again after the 
night of the fire and the local story has 
it that  all twelve of the young girls had 
gone for a walk along the cliff path to 
Durdle Door and had been washed 
into the sea from the forty foot high arch 
of the rock.

A former naval commander living in retirement at Poole recounted his 

experience back in the 1930's off the coast of Lulworth when a wild crescendo 

of screams tore the night air. 

" I leapt up the companion ladder, my throat scalding with fear. Desperately I sought to

penetrate the wall of darkness to the north, frantically searching to divide water from shore as the shrieking inferno raged about me. Then the screaming stopped as abruptly as if the waters had quenched it for ever and a small evanescent form rose on what I could just distinguish as the foreshore, not two hundred yards from my boat. It was the figure of a child. As it developed substance I saw it was a young girl. Her white expressionless face jerked awkwardly in a macabre dance, soon she was joined by another, and another. At once the foreshore was peopled with ten or a dozen girlish wraiths prancing and leaping in a mournful travesty of a childhood game. They were a ghastly spectacle and utterly joyless. Suddenly the figures were still as if restrained by a noiseless command, grew faint and were gone. I forced my eyes to stare harder but the curved foreshore was empty."

There are many legends of strange sea creatures along the coast of the South West of England such as the Veasta. This is a  large sea creature, part seahorse, part fish.

It has been spotted swimming off Chesil Beach near Portland numerous times. The first documented report was in 1457, it was seen again by the historian Rev John Hutchens in 1757,and was seen again in Church Ope Cove on Portland in 1965.

The remains of a strange creature was washed up on Burton Bradstock beach just a few miles down the coast in the 1980's and it was believed at the time to be the Veasta.

Another strange oddity found around the Cornish coast is the Whooper of Sennen Cove 

which makes a whooping sound from inside a thick cloud of mist. It would 

appear in clear weather over the cove signifying a severe storm was approaching.

It had the power to stop any fisherman from passing through the cloud of mist to 

the sea when a storm was imminent.

The Whooper deserted the cove when two fishermen, determined to get to the fishing 

grounds, beat their way through the mist with flails. They should have

heeded the whooper’s warning  because neither were seen again!

Falmouth has  its own resident sea monster called Morgawr ( Cornish for Sea Monster).

There have been many sightings since 1926 and is  described as having  a  stout body with a very long neck and black smooth skin like a seal lion. The local fishermen always blame a poor catch and bad weather on sightings of the monster.

 Locals believe that the monster only appeared after a German submarine U28 torpedoed a British merchant ship during W WI with loss of all on board. The creature was reported to have been at least 60 feet long shaped like a crocodile with webbed feet and a powerful tail.

There have been numerous sighting since and one man claimed to have taken a photo of the Morgawr lying in the water off Mawnan. The stretch of coastline between Rosemullion Head and Toll Point is known  as Morgawr’s Point due to the many sightings along this stretch of the coast.

A skeleton of what some people believe to be a Mawgawr was found washed up on  Charlestown beach near St Austell in 2017.

The Mice of Horsehill Farm series

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mice-Horsehill-Farm-Teasels-Present-ebook/dp/B00O37VNPW/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=teasels+present+elizabeth+andrews&qid=1561556587&s=books

http://www.magic-myth-legend.co.uk/the-mice-of-horsehill-farm-teasels-present

The Faerie Queen and True Thomas the Rhymer

True Thomas The Rhymer: Many people have been seduced into leaving the 

mortal world and travelling to Faerie land; some never to be seen again, for

 once there it is very difficult to escape. 

One such was Thomas the young Laird of Erceldoune who one May Day saw

 a beautiful woman riding towards him across the grass. He was so smitten 

that he promised then and there to love and stay with her for ever if she would 

only give him a kiss: although in some versions it’s more than a kiss he received! 

Once the kiss had been given Thomas watched in horror as the woman’s appearance 

changed before his eyes, her hair turned gray and her face became lined and 

haggard, her clothes became tattered and there before him stood an old crone 

where two minutes before there had been the beautiful woman with whom he 

had fallen in love.

Thomas knew that he could not go back on his promise and as she made to leave the

 hill where they had met, he gave one backward glance to the mortal world. 

Then followed the old crone to a cave in the side of Eildon Hill and from there

 into the otherworld. They traveled for many days in pitch black surrounded by 

strange sounds until at last they came to an enormous cavern and in the middle

 stood a Faerie Castle surrounded by a beautiful garden.

Thomas turned to the old crone to exclaim at the wonder of the place and there 

in place of the old crone stood the beautiful woman as she had been before. 

Thomas gazing on her face then knew that it was the Faerie Queen herself that he 

had made his promise to.

To Thomas, it seemed as though he had only been there for a few days and when

 the Faerie Queen told him that in fact he had been there for seven years he could 

not believe it. She warned him that if he stayed another night then he would be 

bound for ever in Faerieland and for the sake of their love he would be given a 

chance to return to his mortal home. With a blink of her eye Thomas found himself 

once again standing on Huntlie Bank. The Faerie Queen gave Thomas a parting

 gift: the ability to be a master harpist and also that he would answer every question 

with truth. For seven years his wisdom and prophecies were sought by many. But he 

never forgot the beautiful Queen that had stolen his heart; and one day he received a

 summons from her; Thomas walked out of his home and was never seen again in 

the mortal world.

from 'Faeries and Folklore of the British Isles'

www.magic-myth-legend.co.uk

Fairy Tomb

New Grange Passage Tomb , Brugh Na Boinne, Meath.

This is one of the finest passage graves in Ireland and it is situated in the ancient Boyne Valley Cemetery.

There are three great mounds, three chambers within, a 62 ft passage leads to one chamber. The walls are huge slabs, all carved with intricate spiral and geometric patterns.

Offerings of Gold, Jewellery and coins were buried at New Grange for the Faeries.It was believed that they were the guardians of the land and the health and fertility of animals and crops depended upon their cooperation.

Excerpt from Faeries and Folklore of the British Isles

available www.magic-myth-legend.co.uk or Amazon