Now I am sure many of you will have heard of The Dunwich Horror, the classic weird tale by HP Lovecraft. However, did you know that sinister town in Lovecraft's horror haunted version of New England takes its name from a real village in Britain?
Dunwich village can be found on the Suffolk coast, a tiny place of less than two hundred souls. However it wasn't always so. In the Anglo-Saxon times, Dunwich was the capital of the Kingdom of the East Angles, but the harbour and indeed, most of the town has long since disappeared due to coastal erosion.
As an ancient place, it naturally has some ghosts. One is the shade of a Victorian squire, who can be seen riding a phantom horse. In life he was Miles Barne, a breeder of thoroughbred horses, and often could be seen wearing a distinctive tall white hat, exercising his steeds up on Dunwich Heath. But death has not stopped him riding, for he has been sighted many times, with local lore holding that your best chance of getting a glimpse of the ghostly squire is when the moon is either full or waning.
More mysterious is a lady in Elizabethan dress, who has been spotted walking across the heath, and down towards the sea. But as she nears the waves, she vanishes.
And possibly this is due to the fact that much of what was Dunwich now lies beneath the waves. However perhaps the ancient vanished seaport survives in a fashion, for it is said that at Christmas time one can hear the bells of the drowned churches of Dunwich ring out again, from beneath the waves, on the sea's dead floor...
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