Here is the final selection of true ghost reports collected by the late R C C Clay and kindly provided by his grandson Mr Robert Snow. We are presented with two short snippets from the village of Dinton; presumably the one in Wiltshire, Dr Clay’s home county, rather than the one in Buckinghamshire. The selection ends with a prophetic dream experienced by Dr Clay himself.
Sergeant Melbury, of The Admiralty Police at the G/E Depot at Dinton, has two dogs. He is often on night duty. When he is on night duty, at exactly 3.30am every morning the two dogs rush to the main gate growling and with the hair on their backs bristling. The gate and fence are lit by arc lamps. The sergeant always investigates but never finds any cause for the dogs’ alarm
There was once a Benedictine ‘cell’ in Dinton, probably between the church and the present Phillips House.
Old Mrs M. A. Burton lived most of her life at The Kennels, a cottage on the south side of Dinton Park. For many years she worked as a maidservant for the Wyndhams at Phillips House, then called Dinton House. She died in the winter of 1959 at the age of 92. She several times affirmed that she had often heard singing coming from a place, which she described as ‘between the church and Dinton House’.
Mrs Burton was present at the burial of Mr Engleheart outside the private chapel at Little Clarendon, Dinton. When she heard the priest chanting the funeral mass, she turned round and said to a mourner standing by, ‘That is the music I heard within the park.’
I believe Col Chettle cut a trench between Phillips (Dinton) House from the church and found some foundations and a holy water stoop (now in Little Clarendon private chapel).
I shall never forget the early morning of 18th October, 1916. I was in bed in Watling Street, Gillingham, Kent. I woke up in the middle of a very vivid dream in which I saw my brother, Vivian, in bed in a large hospital ward.
His bed was third from the end on the right hand side. I knew he had been wounded, that he was conscious and wanted to send a message to me, but was unable to do so, because he was wounded in the throat. In my dream I was informed that the hospital was in Leicester. This dream happened at 5 am I looked at my watch when I woke up.
This dream worried me very much for many days, and I hesitated to write to my parents to ask if Vivian was safe. He had gone back from leave only two weeks [previously]. To my great surprise my mother wrote to me soon afterwards to say that he had been killed on October the 18th. Some time afterwards Sergeant Valentine, who was with him when he was killed, wrote to say that he died at 5 am from a wound in the throat.
