SATURDAY GHOST STORY

                    IGNATIUS the MONK

The vicarage at Elm, Cambridgeshire is built on the site of an old monastery and haunted by the ghost of a monk, Ignatius, who died about 800 years ago.  One of Ignatius`s many responsibilities had been to watch the water level in the nearby Fens, and to warn the monastery in times of dangerous floods.  On night while on watch he fell asleep and did not give a warning as the water level rose and some of his fellow monks drowned, leaving him in disgrace and full of guilt.

A rector and his wife, shortly after they went to live in Elm Vicarage, were regularly awoken by the sound of footsteps in the night.  They could find no reason for them or where they had come from.  Soon after the footsteps began, the rector`s wife met the ghostly monk, Ignatius, as she walked along an upstairs corrider one evening, and heard him say ` Do be careful.!`  With remarkable presence of mind she asked his name...`Ignatius the bell ringer,` he said. The ghost was wearing a brown monks habit and sandals and was seen many times afterwards by the rector`s wife, who eventually learned his history.

The rector`s wife saw him in many different parts of the house.  He always appeared initially as a faint outline, then gradually became the figure of a man of about 33 with dark, curly hair and fine features.  He was always dressed in an old, worn habit and appeared at dusk.

One night in September the woman decided to sleep, as she sometimes did, in a bedroom that was usually kept for guests.  The family dog usually slept on her bed but on this particular night was distressed and ran whimpering from the room before being calmed and persuaded to stay.  The rector`s wife fell asleep but woke up to find something round her neck.  She switched on a light to find a tendril from a vine that gew outside the bedroom window lying across her neck.  As she removed it she was picked up violently, thrown sideways over the bed, and became aware of a black shape leaning over her.  A pair of gnarled appeared through a haze and gripped the terrified woman by the throat, gradually tightening their hold until she began to suffocate.

At this point Ignatius appeared and, coming toward her, reached for the hands and pulled them away, letting her fall back, exhausted, on the bed.  Before she had time to recover she was shocked again, this time by the sight of a vague creature with a huge head and red face bending over her and her dog and her dog snarling and fighting with something invisible.  Somehow tearing herself free she rushed into her husband`s room to find he had heard nothing.

The marks on her badly bruised neck were visible for days afterwards and the next time she spoke to Ignatius he told her that she had been attacked by a man who had been murdered in the room where she had chosen to sleep.  However, some good had come of the affair.  By saving the life of the rector`s wife. Ignatius had completed his penance and could now be forgiven and allowed to rest.