Ghostly goings-on at Graves Park (by Andrew Wooding)

‘Not again,’ I thought when Mike suggested we meet up at Bunting Nook, especially as our previous visits had proved spectacularly fruitless. But it turns out he only meant we should rendezvous there in our cars before strolling to our latest investigation, which he promised was ‘Just down the road…’

Which road, and the precise length of Mike’s ‘just’ were appropriately vague, as I was soon to find out.

We nattered for a while in Mike’s car about this and that and t’other, and before we knew it, night was falling all around us.

Fall, it went.

‘Better get a move on,’ I suggested. ‘Where are we supposed to be heading anyway?’

‘Follow me,’ beckoned Mike, ‘and I’ll tell you a story.’

As we sauntered in the twilight, Mike regaled me with the thrilling tale of a photographer and a young woman. No, not a salacious piece of gossip, but a startling story of impossible photographs and invisible wedding crashers.

Back in 1989, the photographer in question had shot a panoramic snap across the boating lake in Graves Park. When he developed it, he noticed a young woman standing between some trees in the background, wearing a long short-sleeved dress and holding a bouquet of flowers. The photographer insisted she hadn’t been there at the time, so how had she ended up in the picture? (Cue some suitably atmospheric spooky music, maybe downloadable from iTunes. Just type in ‘suitably atmospheric spooky music’ and see what comes up.)

Around the same time, just before a wedding at Norton Parish Church, a guest took some photos of the building. Again, there was a ginormous surprise when the snaps were developed: the pictures showed quite clearly a bridesmaid in a Victorian dress. The people who’d developed the piccies (the local branch of Boots?) informed the lady who took the snaps that they’d seen that bridesmaid before – she’d appeared in photographs of other weddings at the very same church. Creepy, eh? (Now play the theme to The Twilight Zone. If you don’t have it to hand, just hum it.)

Turns out that a long, long time ago - possibly in the nineteenth century - a bride-to-be received some very bad news before her wedding. The news remains a mystery, but whatever it was - (maybe she’d been told she had to live in Bunting Nook?) - she fled from the church and was later found dead in the boating lake of Graves Park.

To add to this jolly tale, another woman committed suicide in the very same lake, again for marital reasons: her dad wouldn’t give her permission to marry her boyfriend. Could one – or both – of these women have turned up in the various purported ghost photos, both, for reasons of their own, obsessed with weddings and cameras?

As Mike told me all this, I had a moment of inspiration. Maybe we could fake a marriage ceremony at the church in Norton, entice one of these ghost brides to turn up, snap a load of piccies, then nip down to the nearest Boots for our definite photographic proof that weddings and ghoulies are often ideal bedfellows.

For some reason, Mike wasn’t happy with the idea. Maybe it was because I’d volunteered him as the pretend bride in our staged wedding. Or maybe it was because we’d just walked a mile and couldn’t see Graves Park anywhere.

‘I think I may have taken a wrong turning,’ he admitted. So we took a different turning and carried on sauntering.

‘I think I may have taken a wrong turning,’ he admitted again as – another mile later – we were still no closer to the site of our investigation. At least we were getting some exercise. Ever hopeful, we tried another turning.

Guess what happened after a further mile of walking?

‘I think I've … er … taken a wrong turning again.’ (I bet other ghost hunters don’t have this problem. Maybe the ghost brides were messing with our sense of direction.)

The only thing for it was to head back to our cars at Bunting Nook and drive to Graves Park. We still might get lost, but at least we wouldn’t get blisters on our tootsies.

Amazingly, we made it, and we marched through the open park gates in almost pitch blackness. So, where was the boating lake? We couldn’t see it anywhere. But we still walked slowly in case we accidentally stumbled across it and joined those poor women at the bottom.

Eventually, we bumped into a sign.

Bump!

‘Ow.’

Maybe this would give us a clue where to go. But we couldn’t read the words in the darkness, and we didn’t have any torches. Mike lit up his mobile phone – not enough illumination, unfortunately. I lit up my iPod – even less illumination, but at least we had the option of listening to the Greatest Hits of ABBA to cheer ourselves up.

With nothing else to do, we returned downhearted to our vehicles. What an evening. First, we’d got spectacularly lost. Second, we couldn’t find our haunted boating lake, despite being in the very park it was meant to be in. And third, Mike selfishly refused to kit himself out with a wedding dress to aid our investigations.

We felt like the worst ghost-hunters ever. Or were we?

Read on, McDuff, for the imminent account of our second foray into ghostly Graves Park, this time armed with torches…