Imber's evacuation in 1943 is a matter of well documented and still genuinely painful local history, the entire population given only 47 days' notice and a promise of return that was never honoured, and Albert's story, whether or not it reflects an actual named blacksmith's death, channels a real and lasting sense of loss shared by the wider community forced from their homes.
The detail of Albert being the first former resident buried back in the village once it had been abandoned gives this tradition a specific and verifiable-sounding claim, tying his personal grief directly to the church of St Giles, the only building in Imber to have been preserved rather than left to decay or used for military training, though no burial record has been traced to confirm the detail in the sources consulted for this entry.
Imber's status as a genuinely abandoned village, still under military control and inaccessible for most of the year, gives its ghost stories an unusually stark and melancholy real-world setting compared with most of this register's other hauntings, the empty, shell-like buildings themselves standing as a continuous physical reminder of the 1943 evacuation.
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