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Hillfort
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The Somerset HER website describes this as possibly the biggest hillfort in the country! covering the whole top of the hill. And there are finds from Mesolithic to R*man times. So you'd think there'd be room for a few ghosts.Hamdon Hill is, as some might say, 'seriously haunted', with descriptions of 'bizarre shapes outlined by light' to those of Roman soldiers walking the hilly ramparts.
... G F Munford [one time editor of the Western Gazette] was an avid collector of supernatural tales ... one of his favourites concerned a local witch whose spirit is still said to haunt the district.
Another startling story tells of ... David G., a retired postal worker [who] was visiting friends in the nearby hamlet of Hamdon Hill. It was a humid afternoon in the summer of 1957 and his first excursion to Somerset. He was driving along the boundary of the hill ...
"There wasn't another car in sight, and although it was broad daylight I couldn't help feel that something wasn't right. I was also feeling tired, but not sleepy. There were lots of people walking towards me. Bit of a surprise. I stopped and turned off the engine. The shock of it was that these people were dressed in armoured uniforms. They looked the spitting image of Roman soldiers, bit like the ones I had seen in 'The Robe', which was showing that year in town [at the cinema]. I really thought a film was being shot, until they just kept coming on and walked right through the car and me. Everything turned very cold. Believe me, it took a long time to get started. I arrived to my friends safe and sound. Never said a word, until you brought up the subject of ghosts." Mr G. allegedly asked his friend not to share the story with anyone until after his death (which the book says was the year after his experience).
From 'Haunted Somerset' by John Garland (2007).
I so want the nearby knoll of 'St Michael's Hill' (known as Lodegarsburgh in Saxon times) to have prehistoric significance. But if there ever were traces they've been destroyed by the overlaying layers of Norman castle. It's got interesting (and madly complicated) stoney folklore, according to Alan Holt's 'Folklore of Somerset' (1992). A blacksmith dreamed that Jesus told him to dig on the top of the hill. He had to dream it three times before he was convinced. In the hole he found a 'great stone which miraculously split in two, and in the cleft they saw a great crucifix of glistening black flint. Beneath it was a smaller one, an old bell and an old book.' Then the Dane Tofig stuck the cross on the back of a cart, drawn by 12 red oxen. The oxen didn't want to go anywhere except Waltham, where Tofig built his Abbey. He displayed the crucifix and when King Harold turned up it bowed to him.
Giant stones? Flint? Blacksmiths? Red oxen? Crucifixes? Mental.
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Posted by Rhiannon
17th April 2009ce
Edited 20th April 2009ce
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