That Park Again

My dearest, closest friend and I decided we were going to go to the woodland area by the river. This was in French weir Park, it was a favourite spot of ours. We would grab some Martini or Cider and go hang out, where we could see the people walking by, but they could not see us.

Throughout this book of stories, I will write about many incidents that happened with various friends in this park. Because of this, I will no doubt repeat how much this park always gave me the creeps and still does today.

So Sarah and I were sat chatting and drinking our shared bottle of Martini, which was our tipple at the age of 15 years. It was cheap, had high alcohol volume, did not need a corkscrew, could be drank neat and did not taste too bad. So we would go dutch on a bottle.

It was later afternoon when we arrived, and we were planning to go to a party with an older friend who had a flat in the town. We would often go to this particular park to drink unseen, as we were still underage. We would do this to get a buzz going, we never had much money on us, so we relied on Martini for the high, and older friends that would have a spare carpet for us to crash on and some blow to get high. Hash like, ‘red seal’, rocky, ‘Gold seal’, was a massive cheap social high in the late 80s early 90s. Especially when your older friends pay for it, while we used to burn bits off and stick it down our bra for when we got home to our parents.

We had sat in this spot many, many times before, so what I am about to write was not expected in any way.

One minute we were discussing boys, music, or some dribble that young teenage girls discuss. Then suddenly we were aware that we had company. There were three other younger people in the trees with us. They did not seem to notice us, nor be aware of anything else around them. There were two boys and a girl, and they were younger than us. Possibly eleven, maybe twelve.

The two boys were dressed in Victorian Sunday best with the three-quarter trousers with stockings. The girl had a typical Victorian Sunday best white dress with a pinafore covering it.

They seemed totally oblivious to us, and they seemed to be happy playing by the riverside amongst the old trees in the woodland area.

I do not really remember speaking to Sarah at this juncture, but we both remembered the horrific scream that came after the girl was pushed into the river. It was soul awakening, a scream of complete terror. We heard the laughter, we watched them play. We heard the splash, the blood-curdling scream, then silence.

Both Sarah and I stood up and rushed over to where they had been playing. There was nothing, nobody, no children, no sign they had even been there. The whole experience could have been written off as a dream or hallucination, had we have witnessed the whole incident alone. I would have doubted what I had seen, explained it off to some stupid prank, or maybe fallen asleep. But I was not alone, we did not fall asleep, we were not hallucinating, and it was not that late plus we were not even halfway through our Martini, and we were both capable drinkers. Neither of us was prone to silly fancies or becoming catatonic under the influence of alcohol.

We talked about what we had witnessed for many years after with each other and to anyone else that would believe us. We never did look into it, but I would surmise we had witnessed a moment in time. A traumatic moment of a young Victorian girl drowning with what was most probably her brothers on a Sunday afternoon out in the park.

It was like watching a three-dimension video clip, but we were in it. Neither I nor Sarah thought to call them or say anything to them. We just watched them play and they disappeared.

My friend Sarah is now in spirit, so hopefully, she will find out what happened and get back to me. I myself now live opposite the Somerset historical foundation, so I may pop over and see what I can find out in deaths during the late 1800s and write another book. Either way, this spine-chilling experience stayed with us for the rest of our lives and most definitely happened.