I don’t personally believe in the supernatural but when I heard about Alan Ley’s ghost walk, I was intrigued, and thought why not give it a try – if I don’t see any spooky activity, I’d at least learn some of the Island’s history.
It began at St Clement’s Parish Hall car park, where Alan was waiting for us wearing his yellow high-vis jacket, with his wooden walking stick at the ready to lead us into the night – after a health and safety talk.
This was when he told us of his military background and began describing the stars on the clear night as bullets in the sky. I wondered to myself how much he could protect us if the unliving did decide to descend upon us, but it was reassuring that he at least had a first aid kit.
We began walking under evening street lights up through Le Hocq towards the church, where he told us of several sightings from graves and, in a particularly vivid case, a police man standing over his own grave.
Some of the sightings, he candidly said, had been debunked but others, we were told, remained a mystery. This included an incident during a previous walk when a photograph taken showed a seemingly unnatural mist above them.
There, he had us do a minute’s silence to listen for any sounds coming from the graves around us. I felt a little too confident only hearing birds, cars and then the distant sea until the ringing of church bells rang making me jump out of my skin.
As we made our way along the walk – punctuated with a number of stories that made me wonder how Alan had such good memory – we began the uphill descent where my boots first began to become muddy – I definitely recommend wearing wellies.
The top of the ascent ended with a beautiful view of St Clement with the French coastline visible. Alan described a friend’s memory of the view during the Occupation of those distant beaches “all smoke” in the day and by night “orange flame”.
It was incredibly quiet up there, with the night sky so clear that he could point out the constellations above us – and show us the ones beneath us with a special app that he had downloaded onto his phone.
After this, we continued walking towards the Dolmen de Mont Ubé – a Neothilic passage grave which was built around 6,000 years ago which consists of a passage leading into an oval chamber with four internal cells.
The passage grave was discovered in 1848 by workmen quarrying for stone, so it is no longer under a mound as it originally was but this meant we were able to walk inside of it.
Next, we headed through slightly muddy paths along potato fields to Nicolle Tower, that stands 160 feet tall, and could be seen in the distance getting bigger and bigger as we approached it.
Following this, we wandered down several roads where Alan told us there had been several ghostly sightings – in one instance, describing meeting a man who smelled of whisky and cigars who had asked him where the nearest pub was.
While he vividly remembered the odour that emanated from the man, his friend asked him who he had been talking to, as the man he had been speaking to suddenly disappeared.
On a different road, we were told of a more unsettling ‘encounter’ during a previous walking tour in which a woman claims she was pushed by a force down the road and onto the ground.
There were other spooky tales as we continued, including one of windows being smashed from the inside out at an abandoned building, despite there being no way for someone to get inside.
Then we continued the final leg of the tour to the gate by La Rocque where he told us of the harrowing fate of women accused of being witches during the Salem Trials, handing out a list of their names.
It was another moment, where we were handed pictures laminated to survive the elements, that brought the stories, tales, and myths that he described to life with colour.
