Unclassified

The Overton Ghost

Also known as: "The Ghost" in Gower (1880)

Overton and Crow Tor, near Port Eynon, Gower

November 1880

On a Saturday evening in November 1880, the Ghost made what the Overtonian called its second appearance in the village. Mr J. Bevan, a farmer, saw something in white near his premises and told his family. His son and two other young men went after it and found it in a nearby field. The bravest of them rushed at it. The figure led him a short way, then stopped and turned, and when he took hold of it he found himself outmatched in the struggle. He shouted for help, but his two companions ran back to the village instead. By the time they returned with others, the ghost had let go and gone, leaving the young man shaken but little hurt.

The second correspondent placed a sighting that night near Crow Tor, a lonely spot west of Overton on the way to Paviland Cave and the Worm's Head, by a couple of long deserted cottages. Three young men went out to rid the district of "the much dreaded monster" and saw "a huge monster clad in white" moving across a field. Again one of them chased it, again it turned and wrestled him, and again his friends were too frightened to help.

A ghost that wrestles is almost certainly a person, and the letters read like a village enjoying its own scare. It is recorded here as a documented episode of rural Victorian ghost panic, set on the same stretch of coast that gave rise to the ghost of Paviland.

Overton is a small hamlet west of Port Eynon; the cliff path towards Paviland passes near.
Evidence
Contemporary written record
Access
Open ground
Location
51.545, -4.227 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: "'The Ghost' in Gower", The Cambrian, 26 November 1880 (Welsh Newspapers Online, National Library of Wales) [public-domain]

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