This is a B3114 road, 12 miles south of the city of Bristol in Somerset, England.
This road runs alongside the Chew Valley Lake. A 63-year-old body of water which
was once the site of a thriving farming community before the area was flooded
and opened as Chew Reservoir on April 17th, 1956. Prior to the reservoir's
construction, 2000 acres of land were purchased by Bristol Water,
the reservoir's operator. And some of the more notable buildings were taken down
and reconstructed in nearby areas. Between 1953 and 1955, the land here underwent
an excavation which was carried out by two renowned archaeologists: Philip Arthur Rahtz
and Ernest Greenfield. What they found beneath the once busy agricultural
land were signs of human inhabitation, which dated back to the Stone Ages,
Bronze Age an Iron Age. But as fascinating as those discoveries are,
the story I will tell today concerns a community which once populated this
area at the turn of the 20th century, fifty years or more before the reservoir was
constructed, when the land was at the height of its productivity
and a farming community flourished.
The village of Moreton once lay to the southwest of the 1200 acre lake.
This is where Robin and Elizabeth Brown once lived with their 14-year-old daughter Catherine.
A well-liked, albeit private family, they were said to have
been overprotective of their daughter. She accepted this as a young child, but
Catherine began to resent her parents' possessiveness as she grew into young
adulthood and rebelled by staying out all day and returning home late at night,
much to the despair of her parents. But one night her parents' fears worsened
still when young Catherine did not return.
Friends and neighbors joined Robin and Elizabeth Brown as they searched
tirelessly for hours: in friends homes and the surrounding countryside.
Every possible hiding place was searched with no success. Then abruptly, Catherine's
mother Elizabeth said that she needed to return to the house incase Catherine came home.
She had been at the house for less than 10 minutes when she saw
Catherine walking up the garden path. Her hair lay soaking wet over her shoulders
and her dress fell limp with the weight of water. In desperation and concern
Elizabeth ran to her daughter, asked where she had been all this time, and
explained that the whole village was looking for her. Young Catherine said
nothing, simply walked past her mother, and headed up the stairs towards the
bathroom. And there she stayed, for hours. The story goes that her mother decided
not to interfere, leaving Catherine to recover. From what, she wasn't sure,
but she was elated to have her daughter home and safe
When Robin Brown eventually returned home with the sad news that they had
found no trace of Catherine, he was greeted with the good news. At this point
both parents decided to check on Catherine... but found no trace of her,
in the bathroom or anywhere else. The following day her lifeless body was
found in the moat of Stratford Mill, a corn mill which stood less than a mile
southeast of her home. She had drowned.
It was reported that she had been dead for at least 24 hours.
This is Herons Green, to the west of the lake. The next part of this story brings
us to this location on a June evening almost 100 years into the future, when a
ghostly figure of a woman was seen walking along this very road.
What sets this aside from many other alleged ghost sightings is that the
spectre's journey was witnessed by at least nine people on the same night.
On June the 5th 1999, a man by the name of Chris Pugh, his partner Wendy Gunning,
and his daughter Sam we're driving by the lake along the B3114 heading south.
They were returning to their home in Blagdon when they narrowly missed a
woman in white crossing the road. Chris Pugh, who described what he had
seen in a 2001 interview for London Weekend Television, said that he had seen
a slightly triangular light in the road ahead. As their car approached, his
partner Wendy told him to watch out as they passed close to the figure, which
drifted, rather than walked across the road. They were close enough - about 4
feet according to Mr. Pugh - to see that she was dressed in a three-quarter
length gown and a linen cape style dress with a hood. Mr. Pugh flashed his
headlights, but she appeared oblivious and continued across the road.
He later said: "I can remember distinctly that she had long wavy hair that looked sort of
greasy or even wet. I was convinced that it wasn't a human-being. It was something supernatural"
His daughter Sam, who was also interviewed, said that she thought
that somebody was simply crossing the road. But once she had spoken to the
other passengers and gathered her thoughts, she said she didn't know how to
handle the situation. After their close encounter, with what they all believed by
now to be a phantom, Mr. Pugh pulled into the carpark of a nearby pub where he
called the police to report what they had seen. He admits that he felt a little
foolish, and that it was a difficult report to make. Police did search the
area, however, but found nothing. The remainder of their journey back to
Blagdon went without incident, but only a week later, Chris Pugh saw a notice in
the local paper. It was an appeal to anyone who had witnessed something
strange at the lake - particularly along the B3114 - to come forward.
It turns out that this appeal was made because a number of people had come
forward with strikingly similar accounts of what Chris Pugh, his partner and
his daughter had seen that same night. A woman named Jackie Salter,
who was a member of the Compton Martin History Society, set up a meeting
along with neighboring West Hawtree History Society. By Chris Pugh's account,
as many as 12 people turned up at the meeting.
They were mostly strangers to one another but all had chillingly similar
accounts of the mysterious girl. Among those who gave their accounts was a
group of five who had been traveling home from a party and said they'd seen
a woman in a dress who looked, quote: "Solid, but greyish and Misty".
Another person traveling alone was a woman named Carol Gillen. She explained that she thought
the woman must have been mad to be dressed like that and walking on the
road in the middle of the night, but froze at the wheel when she was
confronted with the strange vision close-up. Ms Gillen explained that she
had slowed down and watched as the figure slowly made its way up Kingshill Lane,
which branches off to the west of the B3114. In 2001 she described what
she had seen: "Her hair was very thick and blowing off her neck. She walked with a confident stride.
I thought: 'what is this?'. The next thing I thought was: 'this is a ghost'.
I just knew it". She was so intrigued by her encounter that she
began to do her own research, asking people in the local area if they had
seen the girl, or knew anything of her or her history. But no one had any
information to offer, except one local woman who showed Carol a book entitled
Old North Somerset: Romantic Routes and Mysterious Byways, published in 1987
and written by Alan L Holt. It was this book alone, as far as I can see, which began
the Lady of the lake theory. In chapter six the book details the aforementioned
story of Catherine Brown, her demise, and alleged re-emergence seen by her mother
following her death. Of course there is nothing to say that
the ghost, if that's what it was, didn't come from another deceased person from
the annals of history. In fact, although Catherine Brown has been suggested as
the most likely supernatural candidate for the girl, there is another.
Just six miles north of the location of the 1999 Chew Valley Lake sightings
lies the village of Barrow Gurney. A section of the A38, also known
as Bridgewater Road, runs alongside the village, and it's along this stretch of
road that sightings of the so called lady in white
have been reported for many years. There appears to be no link between the
two apparitions, and the descriptions given are slightly different.
The Barrow Gurney apparition is said to wear a white coat, whereas the apparition by the lake
is described as wearing an old-fashioned dress. As far as the lake sightings are
concerned I could find no record of any other sightings in that location before
or since that night in 1999, although the Bristol and Avon Family History Society
claim that there have been a number over the years. Either way, it has been
the subject of debate within local historical groups and between paranormal investigators.
Was it the ghostly remnants of Catherine Brown who was trying
to retrace her steps home? A home, which like her gravesite, now lies deep
beneath Chew Valley Lake.
Stratford Mill, the building next to the moat in which Catherine Brown drowned
all those years ago, was demolished before the reservoir was filled in,
and re-erected at the Blaise Castle Estate, 16 miles north of Chew Valley Lake.