Graveyard Story

@Diddle

We were on our way through Upminster after a day out, me and a friend...

Two teenage girls kicking up the autumn leaves and enjoying the day, if a little bored.

Whilst on our way to the next bus stop (we had to walk from one stop to another for our next bus home), we decided to take a detour into a churchyard. It was quite early in the afternoon and there were still plenty of buses still to come, so we had loads of time.

As we walked around, looking at the gravestones, it struck me just how many of them had such a short life-span. As morbid a fascination as that is, I would often seek those stones out and read their names and dates - id try to imagine what might have happened to them and wonder about their families (it would make me feel quite sad and depressed, but I guess I'm just one of those people who's a little bit addicted to a small dose of the doldrums from time to time...)

As I noticed one particularly small headstone, I worked out from the dates that the child inside hadn't quite reached its first birthday.

Immediately, my heart sank, it felt like the bottom of my tummy had fallen out and I was very moved at this. I motioned to my friend to come and see, telling her about it and we passed a couple of remarks about how sad it was...

Then, it happened.

As I turned my head to look at her, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a brown hooded robe move across the churchyard, maybe only a few metres behind us.

I heard the crunching of the leaves as he walked and I felt quite sure that it was a monk.

Now, what on earth would a monk be doing in Essex in a graveyard in the middle of the afternoon, wearing a full-on brown robe 'get-up', in the early 1990's?!

It all happened so fast, but I was sure, in my own mind, of what I'd seen and heard. However, upon turning my head to the left and swinging around, there was nobody to be seen!

There was some way to go before he could have reached the stone wall to leave; likewise to reach any tree - in short, he just couldn't have gone out of sight as quickly as I could turn my head... But he had...

I turned to my friend and told her straight away of what I'd seen.

She said, I didn't see anyone (she hadn't looked), but she HAD heard the crunching of the leaves, and noticed that we were both stood still...

We were alone in the graveyard the whole time - this was something we knew of for sure in terms of the fact that we had an uninterrupted view. But somehow, I think that maybe we were not quite alone...?!

Something I'll probably never know, but I'll always wonder about...... A true story.