Upper Froyle Post Office
Upper Froyle
This picture, with the Post Office on the left, has a strange personal association for us. In the March 1997 Froyle Village Magazine, we wrote:-

Something strange in the neighbourhood....?

“I am writing this with some trepidation, but in the hope that someone else may have experienced the same thing as we both did in January. It was the night of Saturday, January 25th, at the end of the Pantomime, and we were driving home at about 11.30pm from the Newton-Davis Hall. We had just passed the Church when we both saw an ‘object’ appear in front of the car. Annette saw a green coloured vaporous spherical shape - I saw a child, but with a green luminescence about it. It was all very quick - I waited for the bump as we hit her/him - but we just drove straight through whatever it was. We both exclaimed “What WAS that!!!” and I stopped immediately. I turned the car round opposite Blundens and drove back up the road - nothing. We continued to the church and turned again, driving back along the road - nothing. In the Froyle Archive we have the above picture of Upper Froyle taken around the turn of the century from almost exactly the place that we saw the ‘apparition’. We have no idea what we saw, all we know is that we BOTH saw something that was there and, as yet, have found no logical explanation for it. Has anyone experienced anything like this in the area between the Church and Old Post Office Cottage? We would love to hear from you!

Chris & Annette Booth”

We did in fact hear from several local people. The most fascinating replies concerned people who had slept, or more correctly, been unable to sleep, in the upstairs room in ‘Park Edge’ (the house on the right hand edge of the picture). This room overlooks the very spot where we saw the ‘apparition’, and there were reports of strange happenings, and people working at ‘Park Edge’ were reluctant to sleep in that room.
An even stranger tale came from a man who, when he was a pupil at Froyle School (just behind the photographer, to the left) had seen a similar ‘ball of light’ to the one we witnessed. He had never told anyone else about it until he saw the article in the magazine.

Since then we have heard no more reports, but......................

In the same area, but nearer St Mary’s Church, lies the Vicarage, now a private house. Previous owners who lived there in the late 1980s reported sighting a large black dog standing in the garden, which, when investigated, disappeared. The Reverend Tunks, who was Vicar of Froyle from 1943 to 1958 owned a very large black dog..........