The three main crossings of the Braye were Le Grand Pont at St Sampson's, also called Le Pont du Diable because the Devil was said to have thrown it up to reach the Vale Castle, the Pont Colliche in the middle, and the Pont St Michel beside the Vale church. The last two were little more than slabs laid on boulders, covered at high water, slippery with weed, and dangerous because the tide came in fast across the flat sands. "Many and sad were the accidents which had happened to incautious and belated passengers," MacCulloch wrote, and it was natural that people believed the crossings were haunted by those who had drowned there.
The Pont St Michel had the worst reputation. The will-o'-the-wisp, which Guernsey people called Le Faeu Bélengier, played over the sands at night. Island belief held it to be a spirit in pain looking for release, which could be made to fight a knife stuck upright in the ground and would leave drops of blood on the blade by morning. What made the bridge unusual was that its cries came in daylight too: distressed calling from the direction of the bridge in bright sunshine, with no living person anywhere near.
MacCulloch's witness was an old woman who had spent her youth in the neighbourhood and told him she had heard the cries again and again. After the Braye was drained, the embankment near the Vale church replaced the bridge, and farmland and later glasshouses covered the old channel. The map point is approximate, near the Vale church end of the former crossing.
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