A real Halloween treat! GHOSTWATCH: THE NIGHT THAT TERRIFIED BRITAIN, a new documentary on Channel 5, 9.15pm on Saturday night!

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY DREAD Thirty-one days of ghosts, strange tales and the occasional spectacular lack of common sense—all written with a bit of cheek, in typical Haunted Magazine fashion. Hey, there may even be the odd moral lesson, but expect a healthy helping of sarcasm, wit, and questionable subheaders. DAY 28: THE TWO-HEADED PHANTOM OF ABERSYCHAN Two heads are better than one. Unless you meet them on your way home. Some evenings, all you want is to get home, shut the door, and have absolutely nothing else happen. No unexpected visitors. No urgent errands. Certainly no local apparition experimenting with an ambitious arrangement of heads. In Abersychan in 1856, that last request was apparently too much to ask. According to the newspaper story, a frightening phantom was being reported near the Blue Boar public house. Its distinguishing feature was that it appeared to have two heads. A bold choice. Most of us struggle to find a hat that suits the one. A PROBLEM YOU CAN’T JUST SLEEP OFF The story describes frightened residents avoiding unnecessary journeys after dark. Fair enough. “Do we need anything from the shop?” becomes a considerably more serious question when the route involves an encounter with something that can look disappointed in you twice. And before anyone mentions the pub: a sighting near licensed premises isn’t proof the witness had been drinking. We can’t solve a case by spotting a public house and congratulating ourselves on our detective work. Tempting, admittedly. Very economical on notebooks. DAN’S EVENING TAKES A TURN The best-developed encounter concerns labourer Dan Harley. Delayed until late, he reportedly encountered the figure close to his lodgings, froze, then escaped indoors as it seemed to disappear. Nearly home. That’s the particularly unfair bit. There should be an agreed boundary for hauntings. Once you can practically see your own front door, the supernatural ought to leave you alone. You’ve done your day. You’re off duty. Instead, Dan had apparently acquired an anecdote he could have happily lived without. The following morning, the account says, he felt faint while going to work and needed help getting home. Convinced he might die, he made wishes about distributing his belongings. He subsequently recovered. One unpleasant journey home and suddenly you’re organising your estate. That’s a considerable escalation from “I’ll put the kettle on”. I’M NOT FRIGHTENED. THERE ARE CONDITIONS. Dan’s reported position afterwards was that ghosts generally didn’t frighten him; a two-headed one was another matter. An entirely reasonable amendment. People are always declaring what they’d do in a haunting. March straight up to it. Demand answers. Tell it to leave. Lovely. Very confident. Easy to say when the most alarming thing in the room right now is the electricity bill. I suspect my own contribution would be a short, poorly structured sentence followed by some surprisingly youthful running. There’s also a kindness worth remembering here. Whatever Dan encountered, his reported fear deserves more consideration than a smug declaration that you’d have handled it better. You weren’t there. You had the considerable advantage of reading about it while sitting down. ACTUALLY, ABOUT THAT SECOND HEAD… The local explanation was that an elderly man had died after falling downstairs and splitting his skull. The apparent “two heads” were supposedly the separated halves. His alleged departure from the Roman Catholic faith was said to be why he could not rest. That is the explanation attached to the tale, rather than a verified identification or medical history. It also raises several awkward questions about the afterlife’s repair department. Who is checking these arrivals? Is there a desk? Can you appeal? Being sent back out in the condition you arrived in seems like particularly poor service. The religious judgement deserves scrutiny too. A story about someone’s terrible death can become a warning about holding the wrong beliefs remarkably quickly. Perhaps the decent response to a man falling down the stairs is sympathy, rather than treating his injuries as confirmation that your side won a theological argument. TWO HEADS. STILL NO STRAIGHT ANSWER. An alarming shape misread in darkness? A prank? A frightening rumour influencing what people expected to see? Something genuinely unexplained? Possible avenues, rather than solved boxes to tick. Multiple reports would be more useful if we could establish exactly what each person described before hearing everyone else’s version. A story repeated by several people and several independently recorded sightings are different kinds of evidence. For now, Abersychan offers a wonderfully horrible little encounter with the added indignity of an unresolved anatomical query. The moral? Don’t lose your head over a ghost story. Especially when the ghost already appears to have a spare. #GiveUsThisDayOurDailyDread #HauntedMagazine #TeamHaunted #Abersychan #GhostsOfWales #WelshGhostStories #TwoHeadedPhantom #ParanormalHistory