With all this talk of souls and purgatory, and general spookiness of the season, this might be an appropriate point of relating an anecdote of me & my bf testing our tent in the garden one night, just prior to setting off for a hiking holiday.

We were snug abed in our sleeping bags (for purely scientific research purposes of course) when in a drowsy state I "heard" the announcement like a train approaching a platform "Incoming!" then I experienced the most bizarre sensation of a stream of odd ghostly creatures dancing along through the tent, like the flotsam and jetsam of a child's imagination. This continued until another "announcement" was made (I can't recall the words) and the caravan of dancing spirit entities passed upon their journey..

In the morning when we awoke, my fella recounted to me this striking 'dream' he'd had in the night (which he wasn't really sure was a dream at all, or if he was awake) where a bizarre train of entities danced through the tent during the middle of the night...

We were both quite impressed that we'd both totally unexpectedly had a virtually identical experience! >cue twilight zone music<

Well.. it seems that my house being in direct line between a Church and a Beacon point, has (perhaps) by virtue of it's location what was once known as a 'ghost road' running through - where lost spirits would reputedly travel in procession from the graveyard upon certain nights...

Despite having camped in numerous graveyards over the years, neither of us have ever experienced the phenomena either before or since (though to be honest I've not had cause to camp in the garden since either). Can't recall what the date was either unfortunately, or I could check if it associated to a lighting of the beacon, but it remains for me one of those little fortean mysteries, which possibly connects in some fashion to our ancestors pragmatic folk-rites for the dead...

Any more 'ghost stories' for the re-Imagined village fortean archive?