HALLOWE’EN is fast approaching and so there is never a better time to have a gander at ghosts – particularly the nation’s only goose ghost which is said to haunt the village of Melsonby, on the high ground between Darlington and Richmond.
Animal ghosts are rare. There are some ghost pigs on Dartmoor, a herd of headless ghost sheep in Dorset, and a ghostly bear that haunts the Tower of London.
In Highgate in London, there’s the ghost of a plucked chicken which was the subject of a meat preservation experiment conducted by Sir Francis Bacon in April 1626. Seeing snow lying on the ground, Sir Francis – philosopher, statesman, Attorney General, lover of science – had a brainwave. He stopped his cart, jumped out, bought a chicken from a peasant woman whom he ordered to kill it, pluck it and clean out its entrails so he could stuff its carcase with snow. He thus created the first frozen chicken but himself caught pneumonia in the process and died, while the featherless bird still runs about as if trying to escape its chilly fate.
READ MORE: 10 SOUTH DURHAM GHOSTS
More locally, Darlington’s most famous ghost, Lady Jarrett who was killed by robber-soldiers during the English Civil War in the old Bishop’s Palace by the Skerne, is said to transmogrify into a white rabbit whenever it manages to break free from the confines of St Cuthbert’s churchyard.
And a spooky black carriage careers down the A689 Harperley bank pulled by four black horses with blood streaming from their nostrils as they madly gallop westwards up Weardale – a phenomenon that is regularly seen to this day.
READ MORE: IS HARPERLEY THE MOST HAUNTED CORNER OF COUNTY DURHAM?
But only Melsonby has a ghostly goose.
It is said to haunt the eastern approaches to the village, where the road passes, dark and treelined, through an old, deep quarry in which Waterfall Beck runs. In this dingly dell, beside the road, there are several bits of stone which may be the remains of Berry Well where the pure white goose used to like to dabble its feet.
The story goes that one day a farmer was driving his horse and cart past the well when the horse suddenly spooked and bolted into the village.
He wrestled with the reins as the horse veered off the road and careered over the narrow bridge that crosses the beck.
Then he looked down, and to his surprise moving alongside the cart was a white goose – it was travelling in that waddling, goose-like way and yet somehow it was keeping exact pace with the galloping horse but without its feet touching the ground.
Off the bridge, the horse and cart swung round an impossibly tight corner, the goose moving effortlessly with them, until it slipped through the closed and locked church gates and disappeared.
When the farmer’s story became known, many other villagers admitted they too had had similar encounters with the anserine spectre: it running alongside their vehicle, its feet barely touching the ground, until it vanished into the churchyard (a churchyard, incidentally, that is haunted by a headless white lady who seems to originate from another misty well in that dingly dell).
Even the local poachers corroborated the story. They told how they’d crept up noiselessly on the plump, white bird as it dabbled its feet on the damp verge. They’d pounced upon it, certain of a capture, only for it to completely disappear, leaving them grasping thin, gooseless air.
It is certainly one to look out for if you’re out that way over Hallowe’en – please report back if you spot it.
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