OK - here's my little contribution . . .
I used to be very friendly with an Anglican Priest who lived in a parish local to where I lived. The parish was small, isolated and with an echoing stone-built small church, which was more often than not empty - except for the priest - when it came to weekday evensong ( or vespers ). The priest himself was married ( allowable in the Church of England ) and I knew him and his wife very well.
I have no reason to doubt his account of the experience. He himself was in his late forties, an intelligent progressive thinker, and quite able to question many of the fundamental tenets of his religion and hierarchy. Nor would I have judged him as prone to flights of superstitious fancy.
On the occasion in question, he told me, he had finished another short and solitary Evensong service, and had just finished locking up the North Door ( main door ).
As he returned in the gloom to the vestry via the nave he saw the figure of what appeared to be a little old lady in a shawl in one of the side aisles, kneeling, bent in prayer. A bit surprised that he hadn?t spotted her earlier, and not wanting to disturb her at her devotions, he returned to the door and unlocked it. From there he went back to the vestry to remove his vestments, intending to return to welcome his unexpected guest when she had finished praying. Less than two minutes later he returned to the body of the church, but the little old lady had gone.
Nothing remarkable in that, indeed, but, when he returned to lock up the North Door again, he found it locked !
Of course, in disbelief, he unlocked it and looked ouside briefly into the churchyard, but nobody could be seen. So he locked the door again, switched on all the church lights, and, finding nothing amiss, switched them off again. Then he returned to the vestry to let himself out through the vestry side door.
As he reached the churchyard gates outside he paused and glanced back briefly at the church. He swears to this day he saw a wavering dim light deep within the recesses of the church, only to go out when he looked at it again.
I've been to the Graveyard of that church and its got some really spooky tombs ( gives out hoarse slightly-insane laugh . . . ! )
Why don't you come visiting me across the mist-draped Dales some dark night ? Who knows what surprises await us among the granite-strewn and broken terrain ?
