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Ghosts of Pluckley in Haunted Kent
DIRECTIONS
Move along Station Road and take the next turning right into Lambden Road, which is lined with houses that span many ages and include a few tasteful barn conversions.At the end of the road turn right, then go first left, just before the Blacksmith’s Tea Rooms, into The Pinnock.There now follows a long walk made worthwhile by the stunning view across the countryside to your right.
Just past where a road signposted Smarden and Bethesden, goes to the left, you arrive at Pinnock Bridge, an easily missed stone bridge that passes over a tiny, babbling brook.
On its banks, earlier this century, an old gypsy lady eked out a meagre living gathering watercress and selling it to the villagers. She was a well known local character, considered eccentric but harmless. Each night as the sun went down she would sit on the walls of this bridge, smoke her clay pipe and drink gin from a battered old flask. One evening she fell asleep. The pipe dropped onto the rags she wore for clothing, and within moments she had erupted into a raging ball of flame. No one heard her agonised screams. She was found the next day, a charred pile of ashes, the battered old flask and the shattered clay pipe lying nearby.But her ghost has been seen many times since. In the years that followed her tragic death, she manifested as a screaming, howling figure surrounded by flame. But in latter years she has become nothing more than a faint, pink glow, that hovers in the air on the spot where the ‘Watercress Lady’ was burnt to death.
DIRECTIONS
At the end of The Pinnock you arrive at a crossroads, where signposts point every way.
This is the aptly named Fright Corner. A highwayman is said to have met a gruesome end here. He was pursued across the fields by the forces of law and order, and made his last stand with his back to an oak tree that stood here until quite recently. He put up a tremendous and spirited fight, but was finally overpowered and run through with the cold sharp steel of several swords. His last desperate battle is, from time to time, repeated before startled witnesses who pass this spot in the early hours of winter evenings. Others see his lifeless body, slumped forwards and pinned to a phantom tree by a large sword that protrudes from his chest.
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