Watery Lane runs out from the Overmonnow side of Monmouth, and its name is a clue to its past. The lane was once lined with pools and ditches, and the ground has since been built up and drained. Its best known ghost depends on that lost landscape.
According to the Great British Ghost Tour, people have seen a man leap from mid air at the spot where a high bank once stood, and vanish into the road at the place where one of the pools used to be. The tradition is that he took his own life by jumping into the pool. The ghost, in other words, still acts out his death on ground that no longer exists.
The lane's second ghost is almost comic by comparison: a postman, seen doing his rounds at the corner of Watery Lane and the Brook Estate. Nobody knows who he was or why he should still be delivering. The third is the least pleasant. Near a bridge where the lane bends, residents walking home after dark have described an unseen presence that falls in beside them and goes with them, and that they felt to be evil.
All three stories come from the Great British Ghost Tour's summary of local accounts, without dates or named witnesses.
Comments