Local legends

[davethomson]

Not many legends round my way because the town only came into existence in the 70's but there was a very famous alien encounter on a hill up the road from me.

It was the "Dechmont Woods Encounter" in which a forestry worker basically had the living daylights scared out of him and his clothes shredded by some kind of UFO.

Nowadays local youths take cocktails of drugs and buckfast, go up the hill and see if they can have a close encounter with some aliens. Mainly because if they do they can sell their story to one of the red tops which gets them more money than the dole, allowing them to buy more drugs and buckfast.

[Colin Zeal]

I don't know of any ghost stories, but here in Hackney we did have the mysterious "bear of Hackney Marshes" which was seen by some kids back in the 80s.

http://londonist.com/2008/04/the_saturday_st_44.php

[Dark Jimbo]

There's a pub near where I went to primary school called The White Horse (aren't they all?) that supposedly sits across the route of an old pilgrimage trail between Winchester and Salisbury. Over the years several people have seen a cowled monk walk through the front wall of the building and dissapear through the back - the story goes that he was waylaid and killed on the path more or less where the pub now stands.

In my town's main square we've got a statue of Lord Palmerston on a plinth, and supposedly if you walk around it three times widdershins on New Year's Eve he comes to life and climbs down.

Then there's a certain bridge going over the river into the Paultons estate (now home of Paultons theme park) that, for no particular reason, is said to occassionally have a ghostly coach and four clatter over it - all of the horses and coachman headless!

I'm sure I'll think of a few more later.

[Heath C Ackley]

I remember reading about this many years ago:

http://www.btinternet.com/~chipchat/page41.html

The dead man lived in a strange area known as The Villas - a street of huge grade 2 listed Victorian houses. They are in a sorry state now, unfortunately. Over the years a few tragic deaths have taken place there. It is adjacent to a busy main road but there is an odd silence to what was once a quite picturesque area.

[The Doctor Alt 8]

That'd be The Doctor then. It ALWAYS turns out to be The Doctor.

Okay it's Stevie's turn now.  As a regular along North Terrace  one  befriends many of the people who work there. This includes one of the security guards at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Of course there's the obligatory lady in colonial garb who wanders the galleries but is never seen to either enter or leave the building.

But this story does not concern her.

It's one morning  just when this guard & another are doing the rounds before opening. They roll open the great, north-facing doors at the rear of the building  in preparation for a delivery. Expecting to be met by the usual sight of  the robust Physics Department of the University of Adelaide they clock instead empty scrub leading down to the banks of the River Torrens.

Both guards turn to one another to simultaneously go, "Do you see what I see?", then turn back out again to find the Uni had returned.

The Doctor probably had a hand in this one as well.

That's right, blaime me...