One Christmas time in the early years of this century, a poacher named Jim was boozing with some friends in the local pub near Breckles Hall, situated in Norfolk. It was late at night; outside crisp snow glistened and in the hedges and trees plump partridges, bred for the local gentry to use as fodder for their guns, were roosting and for now were silent and safe, meanwhile the deaf old gamekeeper lay snoring in his bed.

As the night wore on, Jim and his friends drank themselves silly. In time their conversation turned towards the ghostly goings on at the nearby Hall. They made jokes about it and said things they would never say if they were sober. Between jokes they boasted of their prowess as a poacher and fighter, each thinking they were better than the last till one stood and said: 'Jimmy and me is going over to have a brace 'o' them birds for Christmas. We'll take our guns and shoot them down, and that old gamekeepers too deaf to hear.'

'Now just you listen to me' said an old man sitting at a table nearby, 'you just remember the coach and four.' Everyone knew about the ghostly coach and four that was said to come galloping down the Breckles Hall road at midnight now and then, when the Hall was left unoccupied. Silently it cam, speeding along till it stopped at the Hall door. And as it came, every window in the empty house lit up brightly, and inside, if you dared to look, which few had done, you saw a ball in full swing, the dancers swirling round the room, though not a sound was to be heard. The coach would stop, footmen climb down, the coach door open. Then out would step a grand and beautiful lady. It was she, men said, that you must avoid seeing, for she would look a man in the eyes and he would soon fall down dead.

The poacher knew the story, like everyone else in the area, but the beer had made him feel fearless and full of courage. 'That's nothing' he said. 'Well the Halls empty tonight,' said the old man. Later on that night when leaving Jim's friend said. 'Shall we go shoot them ghosties then, along with the birds. So off they both went full of the booze, first going to Jimmy's house to pick up his gun and a bag.

Drunk they might have been but they managed to bag a couple of partridge before Jim remembered the hall. 'Let's go and rouse those ghosts,' he said; so off they went towards the house. When they reached the mansion Jim looked through one of the windows and peered into the blackness. 'Well don't see no ghosts,' sounding a little disappointed. The village clock then chimed out twelve strokes and as the last stroke sounded, round the corner of the Hall drive swept a coach and four horses. Its lamps shone brightly and then the house lit up

The two men stood and watched in astonishment and fear as the coach came closer and drew in by the door just a few feet from where they were stood Down the two footmen climbed, just as everyone said they would and opened the carriage door. A second's dreadful pause and then they saw her, the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. Her jewels twinkled from her neck, arms and hands. Down the carriage steps she came and then she raised her head.

She looked straight at Jim and for a short while everything was quiet but then Jim opened his mouth and let out a long and piercing yell. His friend now sobered up went running towards the village but not one person could he find that was willing to return with him to the Hall.

The next morning, however, the parson and some of the villagers did go with him. Of course not a sign of the coach could they find, not a single hoof print in the snow. They did find though lying in front of the door, Jim's body and with such a look of terror upon his face. The beautiful, ghostly lady of Breckles Hall had claimed another victim.

A Royal Tomb
Sheriff Hutton, North Yorkshire

Sheriff Hutton is a village near York and is the resting place of Prince Edward, Prince of Wales who died in 1484 at the age of 10, the only son of King Richard III. Edward was buried before his parents could return from Nottingham, where they were at the time, there would of course been a great deal of grief on King Richard and Queen Anne returning and first visiting their sons tomb.

In 1974 Joan Forman, a dramatist and now writer of books on the paranormal, was researching a play on the life of King Richard and visited the tomb. She stressed that she was not trying to provoke a paranormal experience but was concentrating on the tomb in an attempt to understand the feelings of the parents as they had presumably stood there so many years before. As she placed her hands on the stone image of the Prince of Wales carved on his tomb she heard the church door open. Footsteps were apparently coming down the stairs into the church (which Ms Forman said she founf irritating as she hoped for some time alone). When no one approached her she assumed that another visitor to the church was politly waiting for her to finish.

Ms Forman believed that whoever was there was out of sight behind a large pillar and although she heard one or two mumbled words she couldn't make out any actual phrases. She said she felt riveted to the spot for a time looking at the tomb but eventually felt that it was unfair to monopolise the most interesting part of the church. She left the tomb and walked up the aisle to apologise to whoever was there for keeping them waiting. In fact there was no one in the church and no one around. The church door was closed rather than open as she had expected from what she had heard. Ms Forman intrigued by this checked the old clock mechanism to see if that had caused the noise she had heard but the clock did not work. The only person she could see was some 250 yards away, a gardener mowing the lawn. Ms Forman believes that by touching the child's effigy she may have caused a replay of an earlier incident, perhaps when Queen Anne, the boys mother, was visiting her child's grave...