Stories Children Tell....

I grew up in a village just outside of Shrewsbury. My little gang of friends and I would roam free through the summer, only appearing home for food. Often disappearing from dawn till dusk. 

I don't think our parents worried as it was a different time and we were wild feral things. This was normal then.

We adventured, built things, cycled places, swam in the nearby lake and told tall tales. 

 

Bomere Pool - 1982-1984

One of the places we used to go was this big lake called Bomere Pool. We would swim and jump in off the broken jetty. Now it is a posh members only, boat club with water skiing and all sorts. Then it was just the big lake we would go and play in, and by, in the warmer months of the year. But the lake had a couple of stories associated with it that used to give us chills.

Our stories went like this:

There was a young girl (if we were really going for it, she would be a cousin or an aunt from times gone by), who was swimming in the pool in the early evening as the sun was setting, she was enjoying the sun on her face and was lying on her back in the water. Then she felt something swim under her, it felt big. 

Of course, she had heard of the giant Pike that was known to swim in the water but Pikes were just fish they didn't hurt humans? She righted herself and realised she had drifted out further than she thought. 

She started to swim back, getting faster as she felt something brush her toes. 

She was still some way out when suddenly a giant fish jumped out of the water it's mouth wide and full of teeth and SNAP! 

Her leg was gone, she made it back to the side, bleeding badly, half dead, but survived to tell the tale. 

So if you feel something touch you in the water or pass by, swim fast and get ashore, or it might be the Pike.

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Sometime, a long time ago, Bomere Pool didn't exist, it was just a lovely valley with Bomere village at the bottom. The villagers lived there and had happy lives, they went to church, worked in the fields and  fell in love. 

One day, the dam at the top of the valley burst, and the stream that ran through the village became a lake, drowning every living soul. 

Hundreds of people died. 

Now, if you row a boat into the middle of the lake on new years eve and wait until midnight, you will hear the church bells toll through the water, clear as if you were outside the church.

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None of us had the balls to test this theory, by the way.

Another story, was closer to my home. 

I lived in a road called Burgs Lane, and at the bottom was the Burg or what was once an ancient medieval fortress. (In the 1970's and 1980's it was a little hill which had become over grown with trees with a trek through it to the other side)

This was believed to have been built by the Romans, who arrived in Shropshire in AD47. 

I can't find any actual mentions to my Burgs but there were lots of Romans in the area, so it's plausible. Anyhoo, the story was, and this is quite a common one for areas invaded by the Romans, that you could see ghosts of the soldiers marching down my road. 

But, you could only see their torso's as, obviously, we had built over and over the roads that were originally there.

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Another tale was about Pigs. 

Apparently, a century or so ago, there had been a massive pig massacre near The Burgs, I have no idea why (and there is no evidence to indicate this happened. However, there was a bad case of foot and mouth in the area in 1967 and cattle were burnt which is where this story may have started from, but who knows)?

There is a line of trees out in a field which I could see from my house which is allegedly where the Pigs were burnt, of course, our story told of the pigs still being alive as they burnt, and how their screams could be heard for miles. 

The pigs had sty's in The Burgs, and the story went, that on the anniversary of their death, they would all try to head back home to their sty's, screaming all the way, and it was best to keep out of their way when they did, as they were very angry pigs.

My final tale is about me. Sort of. 

As a child growing up in our house, I suffered dreadful nightmares, and thought I saw things in shadows when I was awake. I slept terribly for years, and it was only when I left home at 18 that I could sleep without a light on.

After I had moved out, my mother told me that the young girl across the road from us, suffered terribly in the same way I had. Her parents tried everything, including psychics and clairvoyants. 

The outcome was that, they felt the ghosts from the graveyard across The Common (A piece of land that was outside the back of our house), where walking through their house and making their presence known as they did. 

In order to do this, they would have had to walk through our house as well, to get to their house.

My Mum told me this because she thought all that sort of stuff was ridiculous. I am not so sure.

Last year as I cleared out the house ready for sale, I still preferred not to be on my own in it. 

I would love to hear your spooky tales from childhood,

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