The Wentloog Levels are the flat reclaimed land between Newport and Cardiff, drained by ditches called reens and protected from the Severn by a sea wall. St Brides is a small church and a scatter of farms behind that wall.
The story told of it, as summarised by the Great British Ghost Tour, begins with a rich widow and two men. One asked for her hand and she accepted. Then a man of better standing proposed and she accepted him instead. The first suitor, left behind, cursed her and died soon after. People said he died of a broken heart.
He did not rest. One day the widow was sitting in her kitchen among her servants when she saw the dead man walk in. He came straight towards her and sat down in her lap. She shrieked. When the servants turned, they saw their mistress being hauled across the floor by something none of them could see. They grabbed hold of her and a struggle followed, with the widow as the rope, until the servants finally got the better of it.
That was not the end. In the days that followed her cattle began to die, and the new suitor left her. The neighbours believed God was exacting justice, and that the dead man's curse had left her impoverished.
The Great British Ghost Tour credits Edmund Jones, but the tale was not found in the Monmouthshire chapters of his Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the 1780 or 1813 editions, so it may come from his other writings or a later collector. It is tagged single report until its origin is traced.
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