Dering Woods
The woods here holds many a tale, from tragic deaths to satanic rituals, but we always held these with a pinch of salt. That was, until we were followed by the spirits that haunt the woodland.
It was on our way to St Mary's in Little Chart (that we never made it to) that we ended up continuing on and in Pluckley. Now Pluckley is a place that we are avoiding for the time being due to the sheer amount of ghostly activity the village is renowned for, we're working our way up to this as we don't seek out the dead, we seek out their stories, so it's always a little scary when we come across something from another realm.
But fate had led us into Pluckley for a reason and so we decided we had to continue on and at least have a quick walk around the woods (Ren really wanted to hit 10,000 steps that day. The church ruins had let us down as we couldn't park nearby and didn't want to risk the road with Yogi, so that's a hike for another day), but Dering Woods was an experience we all ended up a little scarred by.
Dering woods is named after the Dering family, the many references around Pluckley made by Sir Edward Dering, 1st Baronet, himself. He and his family are buried nearby in a vault in the churchyard. Sir Edward was an antiquarian and politician,=and he inherited Surrenden Dering, now known as Surrenden House & Park from his father upon his death. He became a very important man within Kent due to representing the county at Long Parliament, hence his status within Pluckley and was even the MP for Hythe. However, Dering Woods has another name.
Otherwise known as The Screaming Woods, this is not a nice area to be. It's popular and a beautiful dog walking space, but when you look into the growth beyond the path and see something looking back at you, you're inclined not to want to go back to walk your dog or go for a nice walk. The other members of the public also walking within the woods all took different paths to us, but when walking back to the car they were also seen hightailing it out of there with the same expressions we had so it is safe to say that those who pick Dering Woods as a nice walking spot soon regret it, of course only if you believe in ghosts!
So let us take you through the dark tales these woods behold before we detail our own experience....
The Highway Man
Robert Du Bois is the possible identity of this highway man, but otherwise he is an unknown man. Aside from the fact he is obviously a highway man, the tale shifts but his round about demise remains the same. This man was killed and impaled upon a tree in Dering woods.
Now in some versions the man is Robert Du Bois, an episode of Most Haunted took this route, and he was attacked by either a guard or thieves as his gimmick became predictable. He was killed with a spear which went through and pinned him to a tree. The tree has gone but apparently a spectral one with his corpse appears occasionally to be seen.
Another take is that an unknown highway man was ambushed and pinned to the tree by a sword, some then go on to say several swords depending on the attacker. This tree is again no longer there but on occasion will appear with the highway man impaled. Some also say that his last fight before his death is played out on a deathloop in front of the woods before he is impaled upon his final resting place.
In the end the outcome is the same, this man died, was pinned to a tree, and can be seen on Fright Corner (Frith Corner) or the woods.
The Watercress Woman
The Watercress Woman is a commonly seen figure which we think is also being confused with the local legend of the Grey Lady of the Woods. She's seen fairly often and will follow you around, but the internet doesnt hold any stories of a Grey Lady, but us locals know of her all too well.
The Watercress Woman was a Gypsy who sold Watercress by the road. She'd harvest it nearby and sell it on, but she died horrifically when she fell asleep with her pipe lit. The embers from her pipe lit her straw bed with her in it and sadly she burnt to death haunting the surrounding sites ever since.
The reason why we think she may be the Grey Lady is because of the fact there arent any tales relating to her. We know the WW didn't die in the woods but closeby. The GL appears just as a figure clad in grey, the figure of a female of course with a long dress, but no obvious details as she's always quite far away. Either that or she is one of the Dering family who all haunt various places in Pluckley due to sadness in one form or another.
The Hanging Colonel
The Colonel hung himself in the woods. We dont know why, all we know is that he has been seen either hanging or walking within the woods. Sometimes he approaches people, but he seems incredibly sad so it seems like his torment continues in death. This tale is a sad one for sure, but he is not the only suicide within these woods.
The Halloween Massacre of 1948
In 1948 locals reported lots of unusual lights and sounds coming from the woods on the 31st of October. It wasn't until the next day that a dog walker came across several piles among the autumn leaves and inadvertently discovered over 20 corpses. The bodies were identified as being villagers from the nearby Maltman's Hill area and included at least 10 children. When the autopsy findings were released they were inconclusive as a cause of death for all of the bodies could not be found. The tale states that the police came massively under fire for this at the time as there were no leads and the case very quickly became hushed up, but the locals remembered. This story blew up massively on Creepypasta and has now become the most popular ghost story in Pluckley, we cast doubts that it is true, but it was always told amongst the playground when we were younger.
The 4 college students of 1998
50 years later, 31st October 1998, four college students decided to go to the woods we believe based on the tales we grew up on, to visit the site of the massacre. What happened instead is the 4 students went missing and never made it out of the woods. Assumed dead, the bodies have never been found. Now this was the year we were born and was a story we grew up on and to be fair, feared. It is another one which gained traction online and fake evidence has been generated regarding both this and the massacre from 50 years prior, but we'll never know if it was true or not. It's a good enough reason for us not to go camping in the woods though, that's for sure.
The Screaming Man
This is the main reason the woods goes by its other name. Nearby was a brickworks and in the 19th century a worker fell into the clay pits and screamed as he fell. Since then screaming has been heard during the night, however there is apparently an awful lot of screaming coming from the woods at all hours, so this chap was not alone in his painful death it seems.
In terms of history, Pluckley had to rebuilt itself from quite the loss when the Black Death wiped out an awful lot of people, but we will touch on that when we do our proper visit of the village as a whole later in the year. This sadly means a revisit to the woods, but needs must, Ren is hoping we will be able to avoid that when it comes to it, she's hoping for a nice lunch in the haunted pub and a little explore in the village, but we'll see. The reason why we mention the plague is due to there needing to be a burial for the dead. We all know about plague pits and the village is a fairly large place. We doubt the dead would have been buried individually, it is possible there are plague pits within the woods which explains the massive amount of restless spirits within the woods themselves.
Our experience lead to at least two of these spiritual encounters. We spent around 40 minutes on our path and to be fair we turned back as soon as we could. If it wasn't for sheer pride we would have literally turned around and back the way we came when we saw the Colonel, but we were 10 minutes in and pushed ourselves on.
He didn't approach us, in fact he didn't even acknowledge us. We happened to look left into the wooded area and saw him sitting on a fallen branch with his head in his hands. We only assume this is the Colonel now that we know of his story. We cant be certain it was this ghost specifically as it was a far way away, and there are a fair few, but we feel this fits. We've ruled out the living as there was only one other car in the carpark and we'd walked in with them so we could hazard a guess that this wasn't another member of the public. The feeling that came over us when we looked at him confirmed it too. We felt unusual, uneasy, thinking back perhaps even a little sad. It was Yogi who dragged us away as he was eager to move onward, he avoided that wooded section like the plague!
The second encounter was a little more terrifying. We'd been walking the path for a little while with various footsteps and snapping of twigs coming from either behind us or next to us. Was a little creepy but we were hoping it was just woodland creatures and were trying to ignore it, that was until a rather loud noise and rustling came from a little way behind us and we looked back to see a grey glad figure standing in the path. This was the Grey Lady who we assume doubles for the Watercress Woman. At this point Lauren was getting a little jittery and wanted to go, while Jamie (as always) was taking it in his stride. Yogi was again pulling at the lead trying to go on and then we took another path which was hopefully going to lead us back to the car and not into the path of the woman.
From that moment onward there was a little more urgency in our step as Ren really didn't have a good feeling and Jay was also feeling a little odd and wanted to leave, but the selling point was when we saw a figure, indistinct, moving adjacent to us THROUGH woodland and matching our pace. We were being stalked by simply a humanoid figure where we couldnt make out gender, couldnt make out clothing, and there was no face. Yogi did his nut, he was trying to veer away from that side of the woods, tripping us up and he was just genuinely not happy, Lauren suddenly became unusually calm despite her tummy doing flips due to the negativity, and Jamie was doing his absolute best not to alert the thing of our intention to get the F out of there or of our growing fear to feed off.
We have no idea what that thing was but at one point we heard Lauren's voice repeated back to us and then later Jamie's. If we weren't both walking side by side, in silence at this point and we would have just have thought the other person had spoken, but at both points we were 100% certain the other hadn't said a word. We acknowledged it with a look and then carried on walking, faster. We've since looked into the lore of mimics and don't really like what we've found. All we can tell you is that we dont know what it was, it comes across as something pretty dangerous and not your average spirit, and this is the main reason we are very uneasy at the prospect of coming back here. We'd prefer to go back with a larger group, but we are at a loss for willing participants to face ghostly happenings. Even when we drive past the woods now we feel uneasy, that's the experience which has scarred the three of us for life. The weirdest thing was we didn't feel fear, we felt unease but washed with calmness. It was the little voice in the back of our minds screaming get out that was the only reason we didn't stick around or investigate.
Before finally making it back to the car we very loudly expressed the fact that we did not give our consent for ANY spirit to follow us home. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, but in this event it was 100% worth stating as some spirits or 'others' are bound to rules. You can never be too careful when it comes to things you don't really understand. We know a lot about this sort of thing and yet are still wildly unprepared or out of our depth at any time, it takes seconds for it to slip out of control which is why we don't go looking, we stumble across what wants to be seen. Believe it or not we really do try to steer clear of ghosts, but with our fascination for history and a lot of it being morbid, it cant be helped. As we've said before, we search for the stories behind the people and not them, ideally we'd like to help them move on and release them from any pain, but in most cases we run away. One day hopefully we'll be brave enough and prepared enough to make a difference, right now however we just want to see historical spots.
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