Night Fishing and Ghostly Happenings?

[Severn Wolf]

How does an evil presence feel?

 

Like pressure is building. Like someone is watching your every move. Your pulse starts to race, you get short of breath. You get a feeling like something is about to happen and it isn't going to be good.

 

Sounds like a speed camera

 

 

I`ve never experienced anything which is in one way a shame and in another a relief! Well, apart from once at my friends house when three of us clearly heard someone (we thought it was his daughter) get out of bed and walk across the room directly above us. She was fast asleep in the back room and, before anyone says it, it was most definitely NOT the house settling.

 

Been in some pretty remote places alone as well as plenty of steeped-in-history lakes but apart from a couple of nervous moments caused more by desolation, auto suggestion or a fast atmospheric change, I have yet to be convinced on a personal level.

 

Too many stories, too many reports for the paranormal to be dismissed as baloney. Maybe I`m just not the `receptive` sort and will never experience anything first hand.

[Anderoo]

Nearly all 'ghostly' experiences sound very much like panic attacks and/or the results of sleep deprevation. Not that this is any comfort when you're gripped by the fear!

[wayne baker]

Along time ago back in the early eighties i use to fish this lake in essex, And there was one particular swim that was called the dream swim. Now it was said that all the anglers that fished it would experience the same dream. Now this dream was said to be so scarey that anyone who had it would never fish that swim again. Now me being a sceptical kind of guy didnt take much notice of this, I thought it was just one of the regulars little games to stop people fishing that part of the lake. I had asked around with some of the regulars to find out more about this dream they had all had but they were all a bit vague, Which aroused my suspitions even more.

Well i arrived at the lake one friday morning for a weekend session and the swim was free. The lake was almost empty, I had got there before the weekend rush. I took my time setting up and slowly watched the other weekend anglers arrive, As they past some spoke and some just chuckled to themselves. By about nine oclock it was getting dark and i settled down on my bed chair for the night. I have never been one for sleeping on my rods i always try to stay awake most of the night and rest during the day, But this particular night i dicided to sleep, So i plugged the sounder box in and put it on the side of the bedchair and drifted off. I had a nice mirror about midnight and recast and settled down again, The next thing i remember was waking up to the sound of the dawn chorus, I had had no dream or experienced anything scary at all. I spent the day stalking a few carp off the top. I had one guy come round and ask me if i had had THE DREAM i told him no and i thought it was a load of rubbish. He laughed and said you will mate.

The second night came and went without nothing happening. I did have a dream the second night but it was the same dream i always have when night fishing, And thats standing in the margins in the morning mist playing a huge fish that i never seem to land. The third night past the same as the others, The most horrifying thing was my milk going off so i couldnt have a brew. It was all a bit of an anticlimax for me, And probably you reading it and i apologise if it has been.

 

There is another lake that i fish even to this day. Which is said to have a ghost of an angler, You dont see him but you hear him casting. And i have heard it myself a quite clear swish of a rod and a splash in the water. and there was nobody else on the lake.

[chevin]

Nearly all 'ghostly' experiences sound very much like panic attacks and/or the results of sleep deprevation. Not that this is any comfort when you're gripped by the fear!

 

Perhaps you are right, but it seems strange to me that while I had fished many waters at night for many, many hours, only one water ever spooked me and that was before mid-night. In those days I used to fish until-mid night several times a week, so it was hardly a late night for me and I certainly didn't feel tired before or after my experience. I discovered later, as I mentioned, that I wasn't the only one to experience that discomfort at that particular water.

[chevin]

Buildings, for me, have the potential to hold more negative feels and so be 'scary'. I have never been frightened of supernatural things when out in the open. Despite that there is a deep evolutionary predisposition to be frightened when out at night, Dick Walker pointed this out years ago when writing about night fishing, reminding us that there was a time not long ago in the scale of human evolution when there was very good reason to be concerned about that strange shadow moving about the bushes, the danger however coming from preditory creatures rather than supernatural beings.

 

Years ago when I was in my teens I agreed to look after my cousins cottage, forge and horses in a relatively remote part of Scotland. He needed to go down into England on business. It wasn't until the light was fading as I rode down from the hill and saw the mist gathering around the house that I realised fully how far I was from any other occupied dwellings, and that I was without the comfort of a telephone, or even a television or radio. I did have a 12 bore which I kept close to me and the company of 2 dogs. After loosing the horse into its paddock I entered the house with increasing trepidation. Every sound, be it creaking board, night bird call or low horse whinney set my imagination racing and I soon filled myself with an irrational fear of being about to find myself in the presence of beings who stalk the night with some dread purpose. The dogs, while providing some comfort of companionship also became a source of worry, I dreaded, and convinced myself it was to happen, that they would suddenly turn and growl, hackles raised at some horror undetectable to my weak human senses, and what use a shotgun as a defence against the hell spawned?

The night became a vigil, I dare not give in to the unguarded world of sleep. Of course it was all foolishness, and perhaps showed that I had not yet left fully the state of childhood with its attendent fertile imagination, I survived that night with no ill effects....well, other than since then, at the times when the moon is fat and fitfull sleep overtakes me, I awake with the bedclothes clinging to my sweating body, and then comes the memory losses. I can only imagine that I am visited with a need to walk in my sleep, for the dawn has oft woken me with its sweet caress in the queerest of places, leaving me wondering what had brought me from my bed to there, and how though I must have surely injured myself, my nightclothes, hands and face stained with blood, yet no visable wound presents. Hearty eating at such times seems to much improve my constitution, ah meat rich and red doth so fortify the spirit.........

 

 

Err, did you get all of that from a Mills and Boon book?

[DenisO]

About 40 years ago I used to go fishing with a few lads that I went to school with. We were about 18 at the time and had arranged to fish on the river Beult at Hunton. The stretch was owned by Kingfisher and, to my knowledge, still is.

 

As complete whimps our night fishing sessions were confined to early season when the weather was reasonably warm and dry. The Beult always seemed to fish much better at night when the big Tench and Bream came on the feed.

 

The club had acquired a new stretch of the river, adjacent to the current stretch, so it was agreed that we would give this a try.

 

On the night in question my 3 mates went earlier to fish the late evening and I was going to follow on, planning to arrive about 4 in the morning, just before dawn.

 

I drove through the night, it being about an hours drive from home to the river and arrived at the bank at around 4, a little before first light. Unpacked the car and lugged all my gear to the new field. As I walked along the river bank I saw my mates umbrella but little activity and it transpired they were asleep under the umbrella. They heard me approach and stand by the umbrella relieving myself of the copious quantities of fishing tackle that I had just lugged for the last 500yds from the car.

 

At this point, Paul asked where I'd been for the last hour.

 

Tucked up in bed and driving here was my response.

 

No you haven't he said. You came up to the umbrella about an hour ago and spoke to me. You then went off again and I went back to sleep.

 

He even described the clothes I was wearing to the other freinds that were fishing, when he told them I had made my mysterious "appearance" an hour earlier. They were in fact the clothes I had on and in those days we couldn't afford specific fishing outfits and just used to wear regular clothes. The fact that I was standing up meant he hadn't seen my face but he swears it was me and described my clothes.

 

So no reasonable explanation as to why Paul had seen me, on the river bank at a time when I was tucked up in bed 25 miles away. One thing was for sure, none of us ever fished that new field again during hours of darkness.

Edited January 30, 2009 by DenisO

[DavyR]

Err, did you get all of that from a Mills and Boon book?

 

Sounds more like most of the "Werewolf" stories I read as a lad - "Weird Tales", maybe?

[john-d]

A village called Ticknell near where I live has some small lakes which have a uneasy atmosphere, and thats in the day light, it really does seem like your being watched. Its a beautiful place, the pools are set in woodland and its very popular for walkers and ramblers and is only really fished by locals mainly because its relatively unknown.

Twenty years ago I decided to night fish the place, I knew other lads who had fished these pools at night and all said the same thing that it was impossible to sleep because of being "watched".

It is secluded which appeals to me and I love the night time so being alone in the dark really doesn't bother me at all. Setting up my brolly and bedchair it was obvious to the two other anglers on the bank I was there for the night, when they both packed each one asked if I was nuts, one of them said he always felt unhappy and sad when he fished there like a tragedy had happened there.

I find it hard to believe in ghosts or devils and ghoul's but that night although I didn't witness or see anything, I did feel uneasy, something I'd never felt before or since, in fact I fished the place for six nights over the course of a month and never slept a wink.