CHOST LIGHT SCARES ENGLISH VILLAGES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16423, 6 May 1924, Page 7

CHOST LIGHT SCARES ENGLISH VILLAGES.

WARWICKSHIRE COUNTRY SIDE HAUNTED BY BRILLIANT AND SPORTIVE PHENOMENON. ' LONDON, March B.—The ghost light of Warwickshire has reappeared on the anniversary of its first manifestation last year. It iis now nightly flitting over the lonely range of hills lying between Fenny Compton and Burton Dassett, which arc strewn with the bones of elegant cavaliers and hard-bitten Roundheads, who clashed in combat in this neighborhood during tho Civil War which ended in the execution of Charles I. The ghost light is a ray of vivid yellow and blue, the hair-raising tints of which would make the fortune of any Grand Guignol producer who could bottle it and. release it on the villain during the fifth slaying. It flickers around the ground like a will-o’-thc-wisp or the torchlight of some wandering spirit. The light is intense. Sometimes it is turned on people like a ghastly-colored spot-light. Then it perches on gateposts, floods the windows of cottages, and anon races madly over the countryside, leaping hedges, dancing through the meadows, and ranging over the hills. A shepherd relates that when his wife opened the door of their cottage on the hill the light flashed by her and cast a brilliant ray all around. A school teacher and her friend returning from a dance at North End were so alarmed by the apparition that they turned back to seek help from others who had attended the dance.

The ghost, they say, appeared in front of them on the road, coming from” behind a group of hills. It has most frequently been seen on the part of the hills which was once the site of the important mediaeval town of Burton Dassett, the remains of which are an old Norman church, a ruin'd farmhouse and mill. It is around the church and farmhouse, between which lies a stagnant pool, that the ghose most frequently is seen. Practically every person living in Fenny Compton has seen it, as well as hundreds of visitors.

A theory that the light is due to marsh gas and is merely the familiar “ignis-fatuus” or will-o’-the-wisp is discredited. , There arc no marshes in the hills, and the light is too bright to be Hie faint and indefinite glow of marsh gas.