Cause of haunting: Unknown
In my boyhood days I was very fond of making long excursions on foot, my peregrinations taking me many miles from Bristol, which was at that time my home. On one of these occasions I took a route that led me past Bath, and eventually arrived at a village that particularly fascinated me.
Lying in a hollow by the side of a sluggish river, or stream, it presented an exceedingly attractive appearance to my somewhat romantic eyes. I especially liked the whitewashed cottages, with their thatched roofs, diamond-fashioned window-panes, walls and trellised arches covered with jasmine and Virginian creepers; their tiny gardens crowded with foxgloves and roses, and their quaint, their very quaint chimney-pots, from which arose spiral columns of fleecy-looking smoke.
It was a pretty village, a pre-eminently peaceful village; a village that was rendered almost fantastic by the close proximity of a queerly constructed water-mill; it was a sunny village, remarkably hot in summer, but intensely cold in winter.
The stream to which I have alluded ran its tortuous course through a succession of open meadows. In the corner of one was a pond, a deep and silent piece of water that was supposed to be connected in some way with the miniature river. It struck me as a very proper place for a bathe, the weeping willows that fringed its margins affording an effectual screen to the prying eyes of children; whilst the gently sloping banks of spongy grass were softer to the tread than any towel.
To add to my inducements the sun was unusually hot, which made the thought of a bath very tempting after my long tramp over dry monotonous roads.
Plunging in, I was, however, immeasurably surprised to find that, despite the abnormal heat, the water was icy cold, and that the scalding rays from above did not appear to have the slightest effect on the temperature.
Taking a few rapid strokes, I found myself nearing the opposite bank, and was preparing to turn about when a sudden panic seized me, and, fancying I was being pursued, I scrambled ashore.
Seeing nothing, and consequently assured that my fears were due to the trickeries of imagination, I once again entered the water and was well on my return voyage when I experienced the same sensation. I seemed to feel the presence of some extremely hostile and repulsive body—something that lived in the pool and bitterly resented intrusion. So strong was this feeling that I would not on any account have bathed there again—at least, not alone.
In response to my inquiries in the village, I learned that the meadow, which went by the name of “The Way,” bore a very evil reputation, being carefully avoided by the local people after nightfall. Though nothing had been actually seen there, those who had attempted to cross the field in the dusk emphatically declared they were assailed by an “invisible something” that was indescribably cold and horrid, and that they only escaped from it after the most strenuous exertions.