Tall Story, number 2

There is an ancient church on the edge of Bodmin Moor which - for some reason which has now been forgotten by the parishioners - always has a 'Christmas-tree' type fir placed at a rakish angle on the very top of the tower, and this tree is replaced on a certain day of the year, every year, as it has been for many hundreds of years. About 25 years ago, my girlfriend and I stopped off to visit this church, but before we went into it, we had lunch in the village pub.

All around the walls of the pub, there were various depictions of the church in which shadow it stood, varying from 17th and 18th century prints to 1930s photographs - each one showed the tree standing on the church tower, but the landlord could not tell us why it was there.

After lunch (which involved little or no alcohol) we let ourselves into the main door of the church to have a look around. We both agreed that - even for an old church - the place had a spooky, almost supernatural feel to it, but couldn't tell exactly how or why.

I noticed that the door to the tower was slightly ajar, so I went over to it and opened it fully, exposing a tight spiral of stone steps that were too narrow for 2 people to climb safely at the same time, so we agreed that I should go up first, then she would do the same after I had come down.

Climbing the steps was no easy thing to do - they were so tight and steep that one had to hold onto the uppermost step in line of sight like a ladder, and the line of sight was restricted to about 4 steps only, due to the tightness of the spiral. Once you had turned the first corner, it seemed as though they had no beginning or end - that they lead ever upwards or ever downwards - and if you slipped and fell, you would fall forever.

About half-way up the 100 foot tower, however, there was a small landing, and off the little flat space there was a tiny, ancient and rickety door which I pushed open, revealing a cramped and dusty little room which looked as if it had remained untouched for hundreds of years.

The room was crammed with objects, and each object was covered in a thick layer of dust. I could not tell what any of the things were, or what purpose they originally served, but this was not due to the dirt that covered them.

There were several rows of rotten and dried out bundles of corn, which I first thought were old bottle-protectors, but they were not hollow. I then wondered if they were ancient 'corn-dollies', but they had no human form. There was a large, coffin-shaped wooden box which was on the point of collapse, but it was a little too small to be any coffin other than a child's one. I wondered how they could have possibly carried this box up the stairs of the tower, but it looked old enough to have been built around when they first constructed the tower in Medieval times.

Then I heard a fluttering, rustling sound and looked up to see a brightly-coloured butterfly flapping itself against a small, leaded window, so I crouched over in the confined space to release it into the sunshine outside.

When I got to the window, I saw that it would not open, so I was forced to leave the butterfly to it's fate. I looked through the dirty, diamond-shaped panes and down into the churchyard below, noticing my car which I had parked under the tower.

I felt an overwhelming urge to leave the place, so precariously made my way backwards down the steps, and this took twice as long as getting up. When I got back down into the church, my girlfriend asked, "What's up there?"

"See for yourself, then tell me what you think," I replied.

About twenty minutes later, she came back down and begun asking questions about the objects in the room, none of which I could answer. We both wanted to leave the place.

We went back out into the fresh air, and as we stood by the car, I asked her if she had looked out of the little window in the room, and she replied that she had. I asked her what she had seen when she looked through it, and she said 'this yard'. I asked her what was in the yard when she looked out, and she said, "This car, of course."

I pointed to the vast, flat wall which was towering above us, and asked her to point out the window. There was no window at all in any part of the wall - it was nothing but blind stonework.

(Despite the title, this is - in fact - a true story which has been verified many times by my ex-girlfriend. Neither of us wanted to go back up to the tower again to check it out!)