The ambiguity in this figure's identity, smuggler or shipwrecked sailor, left genuinely unresolved in the tradition itself rather than settled one way or the other, reflects Blackgang's own real dual history as both a documented smuggling coast and a stretch of water genuinely hazardous to shipping, the same underwater ledge associated with the separately recorded wrecker legend at this site having caused real, historically documented wrecks quite apart from any deliberate wrecking activity.
The figure's action of walking out to sea, rather than along the shore or inland, is a distinctive and unsettling detail, suggesting either a re-enactment of a final, fatal walk into the water, consistent with a drowned sailor, or a departure toward a waiting boat, consistent with a smuggler, the ambiguity itself lending the haunting a particular open-ended, unresolved quality.
The footsteps heard crossing the shingle by night fishermen represent a separate, purely auditory strand of testimony from working local witnesses engaged in an entirely ordinary activity rather than visitors actively seeking a paranormal encounter, giving this detail a degree of incidental, unsought credibility, though no name, date, or further corroborating detail for either the visual sighting or the footsteps has been traced in the sources consulted for this entry.
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