The mobile home park was located in the heart of the Cornish China Clay District. For over two centuries, the land all around had been extensively mined for a variety of resources - Tin, Copper and even (in the case of one mine) Uranium. In fact, the number of mines and their associated underground tunnels was so great that there came a point when many of the underground workings, galleries and corridors ran into each other and nobody could accurately say where one mine began and another ended.

When the mines were worked out and no longer able to supply any profitable materials, most of the district fell into the hands of a clay excavating company. The land was ruthlessly torn apart with dynamite and incredibly powerful water jets in order to blast out the ‘white gold’. Woodlands, farms and entire villages were swallowed up by the ever-growing hole which marked the clay company’s progress. As the only large employer in that part of Cornwall, it had vast influence with the local authorities - for example, it takes minor Acts Of Parliament to close roads, but highways, lanes and streets were wiped off the map whenever the clay people desired to extend their workings.

In some places, pathetic isolated remnants of dead villages still remained. In others, the land where these communities had once stood was re-used after the bulldozers, explosives and dump-trucks had moved on. It took several trips to the local records office and the county library before we pieced together the history of the hilltop where the mobile home park stood.

Long ago, a church had occupied part of the grounds. Research into other churches in neighbouring villages indicated that many of them had originally been built on sites of Pagan worship. In that way the early Christian pioneers cunningly tapped the ordinary people’s awe and respect for places that were already long-sacred to the old gods. With the aid of binoculars, it was possible to look across the wastelands and craters of the clay-workings and see the church in the next village - that building stood upon a hill and was ringed with tall and ancient trees. It showed every sign of being an intruder on a traditional Celtic Pagan landmark.

Having determined that part of the mobile home park was erected on the site of a vanished church, we dug a little deeper through the old maps and charts at the local history library and found that the rest of the park stood upon a large cemetery which had (like the church itself) served the population of a village that had once flourished about a quarter of a mile away. Until comparatively recently, it was possible to scour the woods and wastelands in the vicinity and turn up signs of demolished cottages and houses.

The mobile home occupied by the family that called for our intervention was sited at the very spot where the churchyard had opened out into the cemetery. One resident (he lived about 60 yards away in a direct line from the family’s dwelling) informed us that he had dug up a complete human skull and other bones in his garden. An official investigation (legally necessary when unexplained human remains are found) established that the ‘unknown male’ who’d slept the long sleep of the ages in that garden was ‘several hundred years old’.

When the Police offered to return the skull, the owner of the garden politely suggested that it should be donated to the County Museum. He told us that he regularly saw a ‘human shaped shadow’ in his home - this nocturnal visitor sometimes pulled off his bedclothes and frequently ‘frightened the merry Hell’ out of him by standing like a silent sentinel beside his bed. His story was very like our own experiences in another home located less than 30 yards away.

There were about 70 homes on the park. During the previous 18 months, no less than 15 of the dwellings sited there inexplicably burned to the ground. In each case, a thorough investigation failed to establish any logical cause for the blazes. The hand of an arsonist was suspected; security guards were hired to patrol after dark - yet the fires continued to happen. Floodlights, security cameras and the frightened vigilance of the residents had no effect either. Most of the fires occurred in empty homes (or during the temporary absence of the occupants); the park managers took to switching off the electricity and gas in such dwellings because the Fire Brigade pointed to faulty wiring and/or gas leaks as possible causes - to the consternation of investigators, this measure was unsuccessful. If anything, the conflagrations became fiercer; homes went up like roman candles, setting nearby trees alight and requiring the best efforts of fire engines and fire-fighters from three stations. In time, seemingly of its own accord, the epidemic of blazes slowed and stopped...though I was recently informed that two more fires occurred after our team left (they were less serious than previous incidents and only partially damaged the homes affected).

It is also a matter of record that sudden deaths and drastically debilitating physical misfortunes (like strokes and heart attacks) are proportionally much higher in this strange little community than in any other town or village in the district. In the 70 or so homes on the park, during the same 18 month period, 13 people either died suddenly or suffered from life-threatening or severe, life-altering conditions. To be exact, there were 6 deaths and 7 near-deaths. Only lucky interventions by neighbours, mailmen and tradesmen kept the death toll from being higher. In one of the cases - a fatal heart attack involving the same man who found the skull and informed us about the Shadow Person who haunted his home - the doctor suggested that he had died of terror.

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